Prince Street - Sawing of granite setts

Bristol City Council is looking for firms capable of sawing large quantities of traditional hand-hewn setts. The setts are currently either in store or in situ in historic areas of the city centre.

They are nominally 200mm long x 100mm wide x 200mm deep. They are all slightly different sizes and shapes without any sawn, or otherwise flat faces.

The great majority of the setts are granite from different locations around the world (brought to Bristol as ships? ballast) and some of them are extremely hard. Some setts are thought to be sandstone, limestone or other unidentified metamorphic or igneous rock types.

Additional information: Specification: We require the setts to be sawn in half horizontally (i.e. leaving the original top and bottom faces untouched). This will produce two smaller setts each with a flat sawn face with no visible saw marks, no lips, nibs or chips.

The sawn faces will be, as far as reasonably practicable, parallel with the original top surface of the setts, and perpendicular to the original sides. It should be possible to re-lay the new setts, sawn-side up, to produce a high quality, attractive and perfectly flat surface with 5-15mm wide, recessed joints, which will be suitable for access by people of all abilities and those using wheelchairs, bicycles, scooters, walking frames, wheeled luggage etc. The Job: The Council will arrange for the setts to be lifted (or taken from store), cleaned of mortar and put in dumpy bags ready for transportation (the maximum weight of each bag to be agreed prior to contract to suit available lifting equipment).

Dumpy bags will be provided by the Council. The job comprises collecting the setts from site in central Bristol (or from the council depot at either Dovercourt Rd or Tackley Rd), transporting the setts to the stone works, handling, cutting, re-bagging and transporting back to site in central Bristol (or to store at one of the depots above as required).

The current contract will be to cut between 40,000 and 60,000 individual setts over a period of 2-3 months. We require some setts to be cut in advance of the work to re-lay, and the subsequent rate of cutting to be such, so that at no time will the main contractor be held up waiting for supplies of cut setts.

The Council will ensure sufficient setts are available in a timely fashion, either from site or from store, to facilitate this. Previous experience suggests that a gang can re-lay up to 10sqm of new sawn setts a day which requires a supply of approximately 500 new sawn setts a day (cut from 250 old setts).

Because of the size of the job it is possible that two gangs could be employed at the same time. Price: The price will be per sett and, as well as cutting, will include all handling and transport from site in central Bristol (or depot as above) and return. Bristol - Prince Street