Cement and Concrete Products Editing and Proofreading Services

A precast unit weighing eleven tonnes arrives on a lorry. Whether it ends up in the building or in three pieces on the hardstanding depends on facts that only the manufacturer knows: which way up it must stay, where the lifting points are and where they are not, what it can be stood on, and how long it must be propped before anything is built on top of it. All of that has to travel with the unit.

We edit what precast and concrete product manufacturers produce — handling, lifting and temporary support instructions, delivery and site information for each unit type, product technical data and load capacity documentation, factory production control and conformity documentation, installation and jointing instructions, storage and stacking guidance, tolerance and dimensional deviation schedules, curing and strength development information, declaration of performance documentation, and technical support responses to contractors and designers. Our editors work on the instruction that travels with the unit.

The handling and temporary support instruction is what stands between a manufactured unit and a site that has never seen one before, and its failure is describing the product rather than instructing the person unloading it. A datasheet quoting a characteristic load capacity tells a slinger nothing about whether the unit can be lifted from two points. We work through these so the lifting arrangement is specified as the only permitted one, with the anchors identified, the sling angle limit stated and any spreader beam requirement named, since an eleven-tonne unit lifted at a wrong angle can fail at a fraction of its service load; so the orientation is stated with what happens if it is turned, because units are frequently strong in service and fragile in transit; so the storage and stacking rules give the bearing positions, the maximum number high and the packing requirement, given that a unit cracked in the stack fails during installation; so the temporary propping requirement states how many props, where, and the specific condition for removal — a strength, a completed element or a signed release rather than a number of days; so the load that may be applied before the unit is fully connected is stated, as the temporary condition governs and nobody has that information on site; so the tolerance the site should expect is given in millimetres; and so the instruction is written for the person on the lorry rather than the engineer in the office. Instructions written this way arrive with the unit and get read.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including product data, drawings and project information. We are editors rather than structural or precast engineers, and we offer no view on capacities, lifting arrangements or propping requirements. What we can do is make the instruction usable by the person unloading the lorry.