Providing our expertise for very local Projects - The new Hitachi Rail welding and painting facility

We do try to work locally, in and around the North East of England. This is where we do 75% of the work we carry out each year. We provide our services to a wide and varied selection of local businesses across the North East and the type of work is equally varied.

How do we get steel work into that building or How do we install steel work there?

SCH specialises in providing steel work to those projects that require a little extra effort and thought during the planning and the installation period.

We have been erecting all manner of steel work structures in, around, on top and below buildings for the past 10 years and now have a reputation for being the company to go to for difficult jobs.

Hitachi Rail has announced the opening of their most recent investment at the Newton Aycliffe Business Park Train manufacturing facility.

Main contractor Willmott Dixon was employed by Hitachi Rail to oversee and complete the new investment and SCH were successful in winning the steel work package from Willmott Dixon as a sub-contractor.

After surveying the existing structure, SCH inputted the exact measurements of the existing structures into the latest BIM software. This was vital at the planning stage. The new steel work must be a perfect fit when being installed in an existing building and this was to avoid any costly errors during installation. Once the BIM model had both the new and old steel work in, the information was ready to be sent to our fabrication team to begin the manufacture of the steel work for the new welding and painting plant at Hitachi.

This is now the third steel work package which SCH has completed on the Hitachi Rail facility since the decision to locate on the Park was made. Back in 2015 Finley Structures manufactured the steel for the main frame and had asked SCH to erect the structure. This led to SCH being given the first phase of the installation of the train support stubs to which the trains sit whilst in manufacture at the plant.

New welding and painting facilities will be used to build the next generation of intercity trains for East Midlands Railway and Avanti West Coast at Hitachi, in Newton Aycliffe.

Around 40 staff and newly graduated welders and painters will be completing the high-tech aluminium carriage shells, which are a signature of Hitachi’s intercity fleets. - The Northern Echo

Image - Northern Echo article - click image for article

Some of the new steel work installed by SCH shown in Red. This provides a track for the new overhead cranes which run up and down the facility