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BOBCAT COMPACT TRACKED LOADER GETS TOP GRADE AT P&M EXCAVATIONS When Carrickmore based P&M Excavations added a Bobcat T870 compact tracked loader to their fleet they probably didn’t realise just how an exceptional investment it would turn out to be. As Plant & Civil Engineer’s David Stokes reports, the capabilities, versatility and efficiency of the machine has been a revelation. When we caught up with P&M Excavations’ Martin Dobbs and asked him what he thought about the Bobcat, supplied by dealers Northern Excavators, he simply replied: “I don’t know where to start in praising it. It has transformed how we go about our work.” P&M Excavations is a small, family based civil engineering and groundworks
company working for many of the major main contractors in the province. It has a reputation of being a preferred subcontractor and relies heavily on the expertise of its workforce – and the reliability and effectiveness of its plant and machinery, which is why it recently added the Bobcat T870 to its operating fleet. “It’s a very versatile machine. It can be fitted with scores of attachments -from graders, forks and buckets to grapples and rakes; it is amazing. You can replace attachments in anything up to a minute, it is that quick,” says Martin. “It has proved to be a brilliant investment for us.”
Precise Grading Since acquiring the Bobcat – the largest in the manufacturer’s current range - just a couple of months ago, the company has been utilising it primarily in grading work on the A6 Castledawson to Randalstown dual-carriageway project on behalf of Graham Farrans JV, and on site excavations and groundworks preparation at a new £3.2 m factory development for the KES Group in Strabane, as well as on a subcontract civil works package, including playing fields, at Strabane Academy on behalf of Woodvale Construction. For that, the Bobcat T870 was fitted with an automatic 3D universal total station-controlled Bobcat grader which achieves a consistent grade with ease and virtually turns the loader into a high-performance grading machine. The unit works to a 3D model drawing, which is produced in-house by P&M Excavations’ engineer and allows the machine to grade stone to precise levels; it can achieve high tolerances of 3 – 5mm. The beauty of the 3D grader with its 6-way
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PLANT & CIVIL ENGINEER
