CPA Bulletin

NEWS FROMCPA MEMBERS: 4 Practicality Brown worked with Whittington Heath Golf Club in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on the reconfiguration of the golf course, which was necessary due to the planned HS2 route cutting directly through the centre of the course. The golf club management team took advantage of the enforced developments to create a new and sustainable future for their club, including replicating the traditional heathland environment. This project required clearance of over 600 oak trees whilst the course remained fully open. Working in close collaboration with the grounds staff, club management, their project manager and the course architect, Practicality Brown were able to clear all trees and stumps minimising any adverse impact on the club. Trees were felled using a combination of a 21 tonne excavator with tree shear attachment and ground working chainsaw operative. All arising debris was separated into timber suitable for sale and branch wood for chipping; all were moved to separate storage areas by a low ground impact forestry forwarder. Practicality Brown extracted in the region of 300 tonnes of timber, which was sold within a 10 mile radius of site. Branch wood was chipped using a whole tree chipper; the chip was removed from site, screened and dried at Practicality Brown’s own facilities. The resulting high-grade chip produced is a British Standard assured product sold as biomass fuel. Approximately 430 tonnes or 1290m3 of wood chip was produced. To leave a clear site for the golf course contractor, stumps were grubbed out and mulched into the topsoil leaving a tidy surface. HS2 EnablingWorks 38 CPA Bulletin > August 2019 www.cpa.uk.net Machine Efficiency Improved at Quarry Marubeni Komatsu has supported JPE Aggregates’ Shire Oak Quarry to utilise KOMTRAX to run the quarry more efficiently and ultimately save thousands of pounds. KOMTRAX is a free to use machine monitoring system that is fitted as standard into all new Komatsu equipment. It allows users to monitor all the essential information about their machine directly on a computer, smartphone or tablet. JPE’s Shire Oak Quarry, located in Walsall, has a fleet made up entirely of Komatsu machines, consisting of wheel loaders, bulldozers, dump trucks and excavators, including three Komatsu hybrid excavators. A thorough review of performance and efficiency led to a recommendation of changing the mode in which the machines are used. The machines spent over 70% of the time in P-mode, which is unnecessary and only required when operators need a slight power boost. E-mode is an alternative working mode that still allows the machines to work efficiently whilst also reducing fuel consumption. The operators were asked to only use P-mode when required, and this simple change resulted in the machines working in E-mode over 75% of the time. In this first month of switching to E-mode approximately £3,000 of fuel was saved. The second item identified in the KOMTRAX report was the high idling time of the whole fleet. Over 300 hours were lost each month as machines sat idling. Idling times have been reduced and E-mode is now used more frequently, leading to a saving of £35,000 - £40,000 over the last 12 months.