We’ve carried out a few jobs in London in our time and we returned to familiar territory to install a stretch of our HVM pedestrian guardrail to keep young people safe from a busy road outside their school.
Measuring 10.6m in length and beautifully aligned with the 1 in 12 slope – a victory for the flexibility and precision of its design – the guardrail is the latest addition to the street scene outside the Michaela Community School in Brent.
The school is a secondary free school for 11 to 18-year-olds and is the second school in the area that we have supplied with one of our guardrails, having previously fitted a gleaming 58-metre stretch of guardrail outside Beit Shvidler Primary School in Edgware.
The schools are just a few miles away from each other across north-west London, while Michaela Community School is also a short distance from where a row of our PAS 68 security planters are protecting Brent Civic Centre.
Although quite different, both products have one thing in common – they are designed to stand up to a deliberate or accidental impact with a vehicle, with our guardrail capable of withstanding both a 45° and a head-on impact from a 2.5 tonne truck travelling at 30mph, which has earned the product its IWA-14 rating, the International Workshop Agreement specifying the essential impact performance require from a vehicle security barrier.
And yet it looks no different to any other stretch of pedestrian guardrail you would find lining any street or road in Britain, the major difference being that standard guardrail is only there to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road and, as a result, would crumple under a similar collision.
Mark Stone, managing director of Securiscape, said: “We’re becoming rather familiar faces to the public in that area of London now and it’s good to know that another group of school children can now feel safe outside their school gate as they arrive and leave.
“No installation is ever the same and this is a wonderful example of how our guardrail can be used seamlessly on a gradient. The slope is quite significant on this stretch of road but because the manufacturing and installation process is straightforward, this installation is every bit as effective as any stretch of guardrail we install elsewhere.”
It took four years to get the HVM pedestrian guardrail to market and it has also been installed outside the Silverstone Interactive Museum at Silverstone race circuit in Northamptonshire and at the NEC in Birmingham.
Two further versions, including a shallow-fit design that is capable of being installed on road bridges, have also been launched over the past two years.
