Lloyd Preston 
23 March 2020 
Underground Packaged Plant Rooms:
Crow Lane Case Study
OUR BRIEF
Dutypoint were asked to design a bespoke underground packaged plant room for a brand new mixed residential housing development being developed by Hollybrook Homes in Crow Lane, Romford, Essex.
Conveniently located just a short walk away from the new Romford Crossrail and National Rail Stations, the Crow Lane development is set to deliver 82 new homes with allocated parking, a children’s play area and extensive landscaping on a site which was formally part of National Grid’s wider gasholder site.
The Crow Lane development is due to be completed by early 2021.
OUR CHALLENGE
Dutypoint were given the challenge of designing, building and manufacturing a packaged plant room solution which would mitigate the fact that there was very limited space allocated within the main residential block for a plant room/plant room equipment. The only solution was to go underground.
As we were brought onto the project relatively late the contractor also required a product solution which was largely ‘plug and play’ in order to help keep the overall programme on track.
Rise to it is one of Dutypoint’s four values and so we didn’t hesitate in tasking our in-house design and development teams to come up with a bespoke product solution which could be installed in a fraction of the time that a conventional underground chamber would take.
OUR SOLUTION
The product solution we came up with was Optimise, a pre-fabricated, underground packaged plant room which utilises an innovative pre-fitted concrete shuttering system which allows the concrete work to be completed in just two pours, vastly reducing overall pour time, reducing the number of entries into the excavation and therefore reducing the number of working hours required to complete the installation.
THE DUTYPOINT UNDERGROUND PACKAGED PLANT ROOM (U.P.P.R)
Optimise is designed to be highly configuration and so we were able to pre-fit it with the specific plant equipment required for this project, which included a triple pump WRAS approved Dutypoint booster set, a twin compartment GRP storage tank, electromagnetic water conditioner and UV filter.
The whole project took just 4 months from receiving the initial brief through to designing, engineering and manufacturing a bespoke product solution which was then delivered to site in Dec-19 and installed in the ground in Jan-20.he complete product was designed, manufactured and pre-fitted at our Gloucester factory and then craned into place on site ready for installation, concrete fill and back fill.
