Premier Construction

Pinkston Watersports

Pinkston
Written by Roma Publications

Praise for Pinkston

Pinkston

Situated in Glasgow, Pinkston Watersports is a community paddlesports centre with Scotland’s only artificial white water course. The centre provides a collection of unique, urban watersports facilities for use by organisations and individuals and has proved very successful since it opened.

The works concentrated on the refurbishment and conversion of an existing canal basin and took place over a 12 month period.

During the work, a 145m long, 28m wide water space which was formerly used as an old canal basin was capped off and now provides a 1.7m-deep space for canoeing, swimming, water polo and other water sports. Adjacent to this facility is the white water run, which can now be used for white water canoeing as well as rafting. The fire service can also use this space for training.

Paul Colenso, of Scottish Canals, worked as Project Manager on the Pinkston Watersports project. He told Premier Construction:

“When we received the confirmation of funding for this project we needed to react very quickly to meet the funders timescales. One of the initial activities was to construct a cofferdam across the entrance to the basin and dewater the basin. The volume of silt material uncovered in the basin was far more than had been estimated and the test samples indicated this material to be heavily contaminated. Rectifying this problem proved to be a challenge, however Paul and the team were able to overcome this.

Paul said:

“We worked with the whole project team to come up with a solution which worked well. Combining a methodology of remediation of the silt using site won material and concrete capping of the invert to provide a solution that efficiently dealt with the problem but also provided a higher standard of facility than had originally been scoped. We benefitted from a partnering relationship with the main contractor, MacKenzie Construction, which enabled us to work together on such unforeseen issues as we went along.”

Paul added:

“Working to create a paddlesports centre was a different type of project for us, so it was challenging and interesting in equal measure, but it was also great to be involved. There is so much activity going on down there now – with different social clubs and community groups – it makes us very proud to have been a part of this project.”

The Pinkston Watersports project was recently shortlisted for the RICS Community Benefit Award. Although the project did not take the title, the opportunity to be nominated for this respected award was still a fantastic feat for everyone involved.

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