TriConnex

TriConnex are proud to be sponsoring the upcoming Housing Market Intelligence Conference on the 8th October, we hope to see many of you there.

Speakers will explore a variety of subjects and the conference will also see the launch of the annual Housing Market Intelligence report.

Find out more and get your ticket here

August saw TriConnex make a record number of plot connections for the month.

Well done to all our teams on delivering this milestone as we continue our growth as a business.

We are pleased to announce that Simon Bower has been appointed acting Technical Director within TriConnex following the move of the previous Technical Director, Simon Gallagher, to our sister company eSmart Networks.

Simon Bower has previously worked in both the Business Development and Operations teams within TriConnex, and built a deep understanding of the business which will be of great benefit to customers and the technical team going forward.

Increasingly our clients are commenting on the quality of our teams. Not just on the work we deliver but of their professionalism and helpfulness.

We know that if the work isn’t completed on site, on time and to the required quality progress will eventually be delayed so all our teams are committed to delivering on and exceeding the expectations of our customers.

Below are some shots of a recent electrical installation that received praise from the site management.

Yesterday saw the launch of a new regional office for TriConnex in the Midlands, located in Leicester. The office creates a new base for us to continue building a brighter future for our company and our people in the region.

This Leicester office adds to our existing locations in Braintree and Bristol, which both remain key delivery centres. This combination of locations supports our vision to become the leading provider of multi-utility services to new developments throughout the UK.

TriConnex has already attracted a number of new clients in the Midlands region and has generated a multi-million-pound order book.

The locally based Business Development Manager, Robin Norton, with support from Adam Swaine (Director of Sales), will lead in delivering our ambitious growth plans, and establishing the office base in the Midlands is a crucial next step to support this.
Clients tell us that they want to deal with locally based teams and the launch of the new office shows the commitment we have to ensuring we are physically close to our client base. From this base, we plan to build a team to work with clients and ensure the successful delivery of their development projects – similar to our Bristol office set-up.

David Topping, Managing Director said “Establishing a base in the Midlands is essential to support TriConnex’s future growth objectives, and we’re delighted to be opening a new office based in Leicester. From the level of existing customer orders, we know there’s a strong market for the service we provide to developers, and the establishment of a new base can only help accelerate our success in the region. These are exciting times for our business”.

Extract from an interesting article in UK construction week.

London’s homebuilders have been outpaced by the rest of Great Britain as investment in housebuilding dropped to its lowest value in six years. Residential contracts awarded in London in 2017 were 34% lower than the value awarded in 2016, in contrast to the majority of regions outside of the capital that experienced growth.

The latest data has come from the Regional Construction Hotspots in Great Britain 2018 report from industry analysts Barbour ABI and the Construction Products Association, which highlights the levels of construction contract values awarded in 2017 across all regions of Great Britain. Hotspots and coldspots identify the areas where contract awards were significantly above or below previous years, highlighting pockets of activity or contraction.

Comparisons like this are only valid if the market conditions in each area are equal. Overseas investors, tenure, size and complexity of sites in London versus regeneration projects and national regions coming on strong later in the sectors economic cycle all contribute to the swing. #housebui

After an early 3am start, Sean McHugh as the lead SAP / Engineer on site today completed the existing WPD disconnection of the HV temporary 500kVA overhead line supply and completed the underground connection to the new 33/11kV primary substation to feed existing substations Number 1 and Number 2.

This involved installing temporary generators onto the existing LV network during the early hours to avoid any disruption to customers, and then this allowed us to continue carrying out our HV switching operations to isolate the existing supplies for safety to allow WPD to carry out the disconnection of the OHL Pole, ABSD and associated span of overhead line equipment.

In order for this work to be completed in a well-executed manner, it required planning between all partiers, Sean McHugh (Triconnex Electrical area manager SW) with the IDNO (GTC), the DNO (WPD), our client (Brookbanks), developers (Bovis, Taylor Wimpey, Linden Homes), Ground work contractor (Groundfix), any vulnerable electricity dependant customers on this development as well as the organisation of the onsite teams required to ensure that the operation ran like clockwork.

This is part of the bigger picture and huge leap forward in the development of the electricity infrastructure and importantly gives us the load capacity to facilitate the new higher demand pumping station supply which we are aiming to complete in the next school half term in October.

The generator connections were well prepared in advance and this made for a very quick changeover today both putting them on at 4am and taking them off at 2pm minimising the disruption to all customers on this development which hopefully highlights the great efforts of all involved.

Major TriConnex milestone at Sherford, Nr Plymouth

Triconnex has reached a major milestone on our Sherford Primary substation build with the installation on site of the first of two Power Transformers – some photos and technical details are included below.

Well done to the teams involved for the success of this project to date.

Some facts about Power Transformers
‘Power’ transformers are a larger version of the ‘Distribution’ transformers typically used within an ‘on- site’ substation with a few key differences. In addition to converting from 33KV to 11 KV rather than 11 KV to 415 KV the biggest difference is the rating. – Power Transformers are able to supply 12 MVA (that is 12,000 KVA) in normal circumstances, and have fans fitted to their external oil radiators which means that with fans running, they can run at 18 MVA indefinitely.

To change the output voltage within a range, all transforms have a device called a ‘Tap Changer’, which alters the ratio of Primary to Secondary turns in use. On Distribution transformers, this is a simple device, which can only be operated DEAD (an ‘Off load tap changer). On a Power transformer, the taps must be changed multiple times every day as when the load changes, the voltage changes too. This requires an ‘On-Load’ tap changer, which is extremely complex and expensive, a highly mechanical device that has to absorb large amounts of energy.

Only one transformer is actually required to supply the load (equivalent of about 7,000 houses). In Primaries, two are always used so that one can be taken out of service and maintained, and to provide redundancy in case of a fault on one transformer.

Each weighs 30 tonnes, and has 6,600 litres of oil for cooling and contains 3.9 tonnes of copper in the core.

Simon Gallagher TriConnex -Technical Director