Readypower Group have acquired Force One Limited – a market leader in suction excavation services in the rail industry.

This acquisition marks Readypower Group’s entry into the growing market of suction excavation, particularly in rail and other regulated infrastructure sectors. The demand for excavation around buried services is increasing, and Readypower are excited to capitalize on the growing opportunities in this market.

Declan Burke, Managing Director of Force One said, “we are all delighted to be joining the Readypower Group and look forward to working with them, along with Angel Trains Group, to drive forward the Readypower Force One suction excavation business to new and greater heights.”

Russell Jack, CEO of Readypower Group, said, “in line with the company’s clear objective of acquiring high-quality asset-led infrastructure services businesses, I am delighted to announce the acquisition of Force One. It is a business that we have greatly admired over the last few years.”

Readypower Group believes Force One is a perfect fit alongside the other Group businesses and the intention is to provide the financial and infrastructure support to grow the business to a national level over the next five years. They are delighted that both Declan and Gary will remain with the business to help them realise this vision.

Readypower Group wishes Pat and Marnie all the best in their retirement, and they extend a warm welcome to all of the Force One staff to the Readypower family.

Force One are happy to announce another first into the UK marketplace after receiving our new Dual-Tip Suction Excavation Unit into the fleet. The new technology is the first to be delivered into the UK after extensive testing and mobilisation in the European market.

The new technology comes with the capability to tip to the left- and right-hand side of the vehicle to allow for increased on-site flexibility, whilst also being able to high-tip directly either side into muck away lorries, eliminating mess, minimising on-site downtime, and increasing overall efficiency when working on sites.

The configuration also includes a centrally mounted hydraulic power arm, with increased reach to allow for better access either side of the unit, meaning that the equipment can work safely and efficiently on varying site conditions. With an overall coverage of 52 m² within the 180 ° operational range of the arm, the increased range allows for extended reach on either side of the vehicle.

This is one of multiple Suction Excavation units Force One are receiving in 2023 and although our operators are the main part of the Suction Excavation team, we believe the best deserve the best and as such we are continuing to invest in the newest technology on the market. Force One are committed to ensuring we can offer the best service and the latest innovation available in the marketplace.

So, hopefully you may have read and found interesting my first look back to our early days when we started to undertake and offer more complex excavation works using suction excavation vehicles.

Today, when most people think of utilising these machines for works other than standard excavations, they possibly think of distance excavating i.e., using extension hosing connected to a road suction excavator to pull material back to the hopper of the truck.

What is not generally considered is the ability to pull material not only over distance but also over distance and height! One of our early projects was to do just that. We were asked if our technology could pull shot blast and concrete material from a water tower over 35mtrs high and with limited access when it came to positioning our suction vehicle.

So, here are some images of the project that we undertook back around 2014/15, another first for these machines.

Once set up, using suction excavation, or in this case material extraction, proved to be fast, effective and to a great extent removed most of the manual handling from the process. Our customer positioned and manipulated the intake nozzle within the tank as this was a confined space area.

In our early days these more complex projects were very much a learning process as no other provider of suction excavation services had attempted such works. There was not a point of reference to learn from. We had to rely on guidance from the vehicle manufacturers in respect to vehicle power and ability together with our own initiative.

Today we can look back at the many challenging projects undertaken in those early days and appreciate these allowed us to build a wealth of experience, equipment development and confidence to tackle most tasks presented to us.

It also very pleasing to see the industry growing and others are starting to offer similar services.

My next post will cover extracting material from a very deep excavation point, 60mtrs plus...

As we head towards Christmas and the New Year, I found myself taking a look back to our early days and some of the innovations we introduced and projects we had undertaken in the past. It’s amazing when you look back and compare how things move on. I have to say, we found ourselves saying "did we really do it like that".

Back then – 2008/9 - we were the first company to use our machines to pull material over distance. At that time our first attempts were to use 250mm twin wall plastic pipework connected to the machines – mainly to firstly prove that the machines were capable of pulling over distance. And they were.

We then bought in a mini tracked vehicle "The Mooner" that could connect to this pipework to remove the manual handling element. Another first.

Later we sourced dedicated extension pipework, hardwearing and flexible. We also decided to replace the Mooner with larger reliable remotely controlled vehicles and decided to adopt and adapt Brokks for this purpose, another first.

So, looking back it was interesting to see how we started on developing new techniques and equipment allowing us to arrive at where we are today. And pleasing to now see our developments being embraced by many other suction excavation service providers.

We thought sharing some images of these early attempts and projects would be both interesting and amusing......

An early project using twin wall plastic pipe to pull material over distance.

Why twin wall plastic? Pipe needed to be replaced! We tore through this very rapidly.

First purchase of dedicated high impact/friction resistant reinforced flexible extension piping.

Material that we needed to remove. Abrasive filter stone from water treatment works filter beds.

The Mooner back in 2009/10

This was our first large scale project at moving material that we undertook. Prior to this we had moved material from distances of around 30mtrs or less and mainly soils or type one. Here we were faced with a heavy abrasive stone and pulling these over distances of 60mtrs plus.

Using the twin wall plastic pipe, not surprisingly, we soon found this wore through and needed replacing.

These early days were very much trial and error, a learning curb.

Through these lessons learnt, on this and other projects, we soon sourced new extension pipework from Europe that could cope with abrasive materials. We also introduced equipment to reduce or remove manual handling by utilising a mini tracked manual or remotely controlled vehicle that connected to this new pipework.

Today, we operate an incredible range of suction excavator support equipment allowing our fleet of road and rail-based machines to tackle the most challenging projects.

What a journey it’s been to get to where we are.

Our first attempt to introduce a mini tracked manually or remotely operated pipe feeding machine to remove manual handling as much as possible.

On Thursday 15^th September 2022, Force One, in collaboration with a number of our customers including Willmott Dixon, Barhale Ltd and others, invited Tier 1 and Tier 2 contractors, including some of the country’s leaders in the civils and construction industries, to spend the day with us. The aim of the day was to demonstrate specialised safe dig equipment (Suction Excavators), our approach, and safe methods when using these machines generally. Together with how and where these machines can be used to greatly help reduce and even remove the risk of service strikes.

As we all know utility strikes are something that all contractors hope to avoid but some are inevitable due to a whole host of reasons, machinery and human error are just a few of them. According to the latest Digging Up Britain report, based on research by the University of Birmingham, the true cost of a utility strike is reaching almost 29 times more than the direct cost of the strike. With that in mind, the true cost of a £2000 direct repair is closer to £58,000. Obviously, none of this considers the risk to life, and the impact on customers, amongst other things. Creating a safe system of work that reduces strikes, near misses, improves employee safety and reduce environmental damage is something we take seriously at Force One. The possible applications for suction excavation across projects is constantly evolving and growing and we want to ensure customers have a good understanding of their use to constantly improve safety when excavating services.

On the day we were able to show a range of our machines demonstrating different safe dig scenarios; from a standard excavation over buried services, to material removal from an excavation over 80 meters horizontal distance from the position of one of our Specialist, High Powered Quad Fan suction excavators.

Getting a large suction vehicle to some excavation locations can be almost impossible and an example of this could be excavations in fields or on uneven ground where a standard road suction excavator just could not be used. However, we demonstrated how the use of our rough terrain 8x8 vehicle is an option in these circumstances.

Alongside our range of specialist machines, including high tip, left and right tip, plus machines with self-drive hydrostatic drive systems, being demonstrated, we had various supporting equipment on display which are used in conjunction with our suction excavator including:

• High Performance Air Lance
• High Pressure Water System
• Remote Nozzle Units – radio controlled.
• Safe dig nozzles
• Long reach nozzles

In addition, we were happy to have members from the CPA exhibiting and answering questions on their service and membership, plus underlining their guideline report on the safe operation of suction excavators including the need for operatives of these machines to have the CPCS A78 qualification and two man teams.

Also exhibiting were Radiodetection and Spillard Safety Systems. Their demonstration of systems and equipment drew a lot of interest from those attending.

Holding this size of event was a first for Force One and represented the largest demonstration of suction excavators and related safe dig systems held in the UK by an independent operator of these machines.

With over 100 people attending from various sectors within the industry the day proved a great success with very positive feedback with many stating the event had broadened knowledge and will help in how and where suction excavation services will be applied in future.

With the success of this event, together with the lessons we have learnt in its organisation and the feedback received from those attending we intend to hold similar events in the future.

For more information about our excavators, the supporting equipment listed above, suction excavator hire or to discuss how we can help on your project, please contact a member of the Force One team on 01354 655441 or email us at enquiries@forceoneltd.co.uk. We are always happy to help.