Whinny Hill training area completes upgrade

The investment into the Whinny Hill, Catterick, trainingarea’s urban operations training facility has created a more challengingtraining environment for the armed forces and emergency services personnel whouse it. The upgrade has created a more realistic environment for troopscarrying out modern day military training in the area.

The new facility consists of 13 buildings constructed frompurpose-built reconfigurable containers. The single and two-story buildingshave a variety of access points and forced entry points. A further multi-storybuilding provides helicopter and rope access training.

Working with BeaverFit Ltd and industry partner LandmarcSupport Services, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) delivered theproject in two phases, the first finished in October 2018 and the second completedin March 2019. The facility remained operational throughout the constructionperiod so that the impact on vital military training was minimised.

Claire Travis, project manager from Landmarc, commented: “Thebuildings have been designed with facades to add realism and internal roomlayouts that are reconfigurable to enable different challenges for defendersand attackers.

“One of the key challenges was to ensure that the existingurban training facility remained operational whilst the project was delivered.This required close collaboration with DIO and our contractors to de-conflictthe training areas during vehicle movements and the final delivery of thecontainers, which were manufactured off-site to provide a more flexible andcost-effective solution.”

Maj. Gen. Tim Hyams said: “Whinny Hill is the principalsub-unit urban training facility in the North of the U.K. and the enhancementsmade here will develop further our ability to prepare for operations in complexurban terrain.”