After a fire in 2008 which completely destroyed the pavilion of the historic Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare and made headline news around the world the big question was what was the future of the pier.
In the weeks that followed an ambitious plan was announced that would completely rebuild the pier in just two years providing a modern structure sympathetic to the original whilst offering state of the art facilities and a major event venue.
From an engineering perspective the work was challenging, the pavilion is a quarter of a mile out at sea built on mud flats in a tidal estuary subject to changeable weather conditions. Builders Sisk had to devise innovative solutions to these problems which increased the technical risk in the project. A five ton axel weight limit on the pier also prevented the use of heavy equipment including cranes on the pier and made transporting building materials difficult.
The biggest risk in stakeholder management was the local council who were both keen to re-build the pier but resistive to the improvements in facilities compared with the old pier. Special interest groups like English Heritage also threatened to slow progress due to the level of consultation and involvement they wanted. Management of these stakeholders was key to keeping the project on track, and a frequent source of news headlines and local controversy!
The largest stakeholder group was the general public, the level of public interest and support and goodwill for the pier was outstanding and a positive influence on the project. This also generated a need to live up to the expectations of people who held memories of time spent on the old pier close to their hearts. A selection of the comments and support can be seen on the Grand Pier website.
As a customer Kerry and Michelle Michael the pier owners were demanding, investing millions of pounds of their own money and possessing not just a clear vision for the pier but a keen eye for detail. There was also a strong desire to stick to the publicly announced schedule despite the inevitable setback such a large project generates. Their key focus can easily be characterised as deliver the project to Quality and Time over and above Cost. As evidenced by the imminent pier opening the project stuck to these ideals.
Solutions to project constraints included loading crawler cranes onto barges and floating them out to sea and building a massive raised compound on the beach to store equipment which was deliberately built at a height that could cope with normal tides but to save costs it was accepted that the compound would flood a few times a year during exceptionally high tides (a classic example of trading priorities in addressing risk). Building materials were either sectioned down to loads which could meet the weight limits and taken out on special purpose vehicles or floated out to sea and craned onto the site. New piles were driven into the sea bed to provide a level floor to build on and take the weight of the new building, the old deck being not just incapable of taking the load but also varying in height across its length by more than 6 inches. The new deck ended up being accurate to just two millimeters along its length, and is estimated to sink into the sea bed by 50 millimeters over the next 20 years something which the structural engineers had to account for by choosing not to tie it to the existing pier deck at any point. The end result is a pier with two separate structures one inside the other.
The end result of all this hard work will be a brand new Grand Pier set to revitalise Weston-Super-Mare. You can read more about the project at these websites:
The Grand Pier Website and Blog.
This is Bristol first peek at the new pier
