Rolls-Royce aircraft engine winched into place at Derby Silk Mill

An exciting milestone has been reached at Derby Silk Mill where Speller Metcalfe is developing the new £17m ‘Museum of Making’.

A team of specialists has winched a Derby-made Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine into the building, as the first of over 50,000 objects which will be on display when the museum opens its doors for the first time next autumn.

The huge engine, which with its stand weighs over seven tonnes, powered the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on its maiden flight in 2006 and has transported more than 150 million passengers around the world.

In order to get it into the building a four tonne tractor and three tonne trailer were required to position the engine and a concrete floor had to be laid in order to lift it up and winch it into place. Now the engine is safely in place work can commence on building the museum’s new Civic Hall around the engine.

Located at the edge of the Derwent Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site and the location of the world’s first factory, the Museum of Making will tell Derby’s 300-year history of making and industry and is being developed using a unique co-production approach that has seen more than 28,000 hours of volunteering go into the project to date.

The musuem is also the first of it’s kind to use the Integrated Project Insurance (IPI) procurement model – an innovative new approach to construction aimed at reducing inefficiencies, promoting collaborative working and driving innovation. Speller Metcalfe is the only contractor with experience of IPI, having completed the trial project at Dudley College of Technology in 2017, and for which the team was presented with the National Constructing Excellence Award for Integrated and Collaborative Working.

Watch our video of the engine being installed: