Carnforth communications firm awarded exciting radar tower contract

The contract was awarded to LARS following their submission of a bespoke design which could be developed and applied to various radar tower applications.

Initially, the approved design was applied to structures which were installed at three sites in England.

The first of these sites was in Cambridgeshire, where a 30-metre tower was installed. This was followed by two 20-metre tower installations in Hampshire and Oxfordshire.

More recently, LARS teams have completed the installation of a 10m version of the radar tower in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, with additional installation applications lined up for further sites throughout 2022/23, including North Yorkshire, Wales and another site in Cambridgeshire.

All of the steel fabrication is carried out at the LARS in-house fabrication workshop in Carnforth.

The towers undergo rigorous factory acceptance tests ensuring that each component complies with required specifications, and all are certified under the UKCA marking scheme for structural steelwork.

This also ensures that once the installation teams are on site, the tower build itself can be carried out with maximum efficiency.

In each instance, LARS has overseen the transportation of the towers to each site. Once delivered, the team manages the plant equipment required for the installation, including cranes, telehandlers, traffic management systems and task lighting. The company employs its own experienced climbing engineers to erect the structures.

Business development manager Julian Cooper was delighted to win the project.

He said: “This is a really exciting project to work on and a fantastic win for us.

“The brief required an entirely new design, something which could be applied to other radar sites going forward. We have now completed the installation at the first few sites and look forward to several more over the course of the next year or so.

“Finally, a massive thank you to all involved. This has been a fantastic team effort and we can all feel justifiably proud of what we’ve achieved so far.”