A new luxury apartment development on the seafront overlooking the Bristol Channel provided an attractive backdrop and panorama but the slope stability and retaining wall work required to discipline the exposed banks and access road proved anachronistic.
The new flats were situated on the low side of a very steep cliff face requiring the structural refurbishment of an old sea wall and new RC contiguous piles to form the lower slab terrace of three storey construction.
Geolex were employed both as design consultants and as specialist contract managers in the design and installation of a soil nailed gabion faced 10m high flank wall supporting made ground and the existing highway at the west ridge of the site together with an extensive reinforced soil modular block wall at second floor level supporting the new upper level access road and associated services.
Highways Approval through a design AIP process required careful consideration of the logistics and programming of the works on site and required in depth dialogue between Geotechnical Consultants Hydrock Limited, contractor Capstan Limited and Piling Contractor Foundation Piling Limited at all stages of the groundworks activities on site.
Unexpected changes in ground conditions during the soil nailing activities combined with groundwater seepages required very quick response times and design changes leading to additional resources and increases in shift working hours to compensate, much to the approval of the client and with benefits to overall build programme.
The reinforced soil modular block wall construction was hampered by extremely difficult working area access constraints, being on the low side of an existing masonry wall which in turn was supporting a busy local road above. In particular, the effective management of the operations to remove site spoil whilst coordinating the import and placing of granular fill as backfill to the RE structure in parallel with services and drainage installation was paramount to the safety of all on site.