Bierley Lane

“My involvement in this project began back in August 2024, when we were approached by Athena, who were doing the earthworks, roads and sewers for the project, and were able to provide product in the form of Polysewer, Ridgisewer, and fittings and accessories” Jon Stewart, Business Development Director – Drainage at Polypipe Civils & Green Urbanisation, said.

“As is typically the case when we’re working with Athena, we were able to get early involvement in this project, so we were able to follow it all the way through from doing the structural calculations to ensure that the products were fit for purpose (in this case, for highways and Yorkshire Water) to site.”

“We’ve had a really good relationship with Jon, and the Polypipe CGU team, for probably 15 years or so now, and Polypipe CGU are always first choice for us, no matter what. The whole thing is that using plastic is the quickest and safest way of doing things for us, plus the longevity of plastic compared to clay or concrete is much better so, if we get drawings that show those traditional materials, we always look to change where we can. This project, however, was actually specified as plastic,” James Marshall, Commercial Director at Athena, said.

“Polypipe CGU took the scheme on for us, and we got a really good schedule of the requirements, everything we needed from pipe to all the bits that go with it – junctions, gullies, et cetera. We placed the order through Keyline and it’s been pretty much bang-on the take-off that the Polypipe CGU team did for us, so that saved us quite a lot of time, especially for our buying department.”

“We were on site in October and, by Christmas – so less than three months – we had all the roads in and backfilled, so it was a very quick, very simple project for us and that was certainly helped by the efficiency of the team at Polypipe CGU so I’d 100% recommend them, every time. The speed of delivery is a huge advantage – some manufacturers can be weeks and months in some cases, but the Polypipe CGU lead time is usually two or three days, and that flexibility of deliveries and supply is very helpful to us,” James said.

“There’s also a speed element when it comes to health and safety. Using plastic products from Polypipe CGU means that our manual handling is massively reduced, and the durability of the product helps a lot with that - for example, if we were working with clay and it was dropped, there’s a whole host of things to deal with but, with plastic, there’s no issue at all.”

“Like James said, our relationship with Athena dates back over 15 years. We were introduced by one of our merchants, and our first project with them was an agricultural job in Rochdale, when Polystorm was used, and the rest is history,” Jon said.  

“The Athena team is small but mighty and working with them is a real collaboration. On our side, the fulfilment extends through to completion of the install – it’s everything from doing the take-off in the office, to site visits and working with the site team on schedules, providing feedback both ways, and this project was no different. It’s just another in a line of successful collaborations with James and Jonathan [Hotham, Athena’s Construction Director] and a pleasure to work on.”