Readstone Construction complete £3.7m production facility at Fort Vale

Altham-based Readstone Construction have completed an exciting £3.7m project at Fort Vale Engineering in Simonstone, both on time and on budget.

The new production facility is currently being kitted out by Fort Vale and it will be used as an assembly hall and despatch area by the company, who make valves and fittings for the road transport industry and distribute their products all around the world.

A significant project, the building was built on the old Philips / Mullards factory of 20+ years ago, which required all the old building foundations to be taken out, before work could be started on the new facility.

Fort Vale’s latest investment features 30,000sqft of warehouse space, a full staff canteen for 30 staff including a seating area, kitchen and vending machines, two meeting rooms, office space, a locker room with showers, air conditioning, a state-of-the-art full glass platform lift, a server room, plus an accessible toilet and shower room.

A unique offering from Readstone, they have worked with their specialist sub-contractors to install a ‘Building Management System (BMS)’ which involved completing a survey of Fort Vale’s existing buildings, with the BMS now linking up with those buildings. Not only has it been future proofed, but it also monitors all the energy usage throughout the building.

Located in the plant room and referred to as the heart of the building, that space also features data panels, plumbing systems, cylinders, vessels, CCTV and much more.

With Fort Vale extremely energy conscious, solar panels and energy efficient lighting has also been installed as part of the project, while an air lock system is in place, which saves on heat loss when goods are being transferred through from the warehouse into the facility.

Simon Whittam, project director at Readstone Construction, said: “This has been an extremely rewarding project for us to work on as a company.

“Fort Vale are continuing to expand here in East Lancashire and it has been a real honour to deliver a state-of-the-art facility both on time and on budget.

“These specialist high end units are what we can offer, and we have left a very happy client.”

You can learn more about Readstone Construction on their website: https://www.readstoneconstruction.com/