Cardiff St David’s, city development

This £675 million Cardiff St David’s city. Required around 98,000 cubic metres of concrete to the project, which incorporates the largest John Lewis store outside of Oxford Street in London, plus apartment blocks, offices, shops, bars, cafes and restaurants.

The project incorporated a range of mixes from the basic C32/40 for the mass foundation pours (25,000m), 22 slip form pours with the highest being 40 metres, lytag decking for the apartment blocks, watertight concrete for the basement works and some self compacting concrete for the highly congested steel areas. This diversity of product was developed through a very close working relationship between our own technical and operational staff and the conctractor's team.

A Liebherr 80 Mobilmix concrete plant was installed about two miles away on the Hanson wharf at Cardiff Docks to supply the project.

There were a number of restrictions associated with the contract, the main one being the limited access to the site due to its location in the city centre, and the working time restrictions of 7am to 6pm set by the local authority.