RA Dalton Success Stories

It is not an entirely uncommon occurrence that we are approached by a customer who is at their wits end, with many companies walking away from the job due to the difficult nature of the ground conditions. Not one to shy away from the challenge our contracts manager Alan law attended site to try to come up with the best solution.

Knowing the water table was going to be high due to site location we pre-empted the requirement for shoring equipment which is vital for the excavation stabilisation especially when dealing with saturated ground.

Our original scope of works was to install a Kingspan Klargester BioTec 2 IPS 1m invert package treatment plant to serve the office facilities on this site, the desired installation location would mean that the system would have to pump to a higher level drainage field to the front of the site.

Unfortunately even the best laid plans don’t always come to fruition – our site was set up for a chilly Monday morning in November, the machinery was there early doors ready for a buckle down start on what we knew would be a tricky install.

The shoring arrived on the Monday afternoon, allowing our engineers to set up site, go through the job with our contracts managers and thoroughly CAT scan the area ahead of any excavation works. As soon as the delivery had been made the engineers wasted no time in getting cracked on!

After reaching a depth of around 1m we unfortunately hit running sand that even with a double frame was breaching the shoring – after trying to battle against the constant flow we decided it was time to go back to the drawing board!

Knowing that the BioTec was no longer a practical option due to the dig depth but in the location requested this was the only system that would fit. Needless to say the drawing board just got a considerable amount bigger! After working closely with the customer and Kingspan Klargester a new plan had been proposed.

Within our new scope of works not only came a new installation location but also a new proposed system, looking at the levels in which we were hitting running sand and size of the installation location we opted to install the Kingspan Klargester Bioficient 3 shallow install model, this has a few minor modification to the overall dimensions of the treatment plant whilst keeping the same level of treatment efficiency.

This proved to be a much easier installation, not taking any risks we still utilised a temporary shoring system to stabilise the excavation and reinforced concrete mesh to give the concrete that little bit of extra fortification required to battle against the ground condition for years to come. This was a site where it was imperative that the right mix and specification of concrete was used.

Even the smallest of things could have compromised this job and it was thankfully down to the due diligence of our engineers and contracts managers that allowed the job to progress smoothly and left the customer with a snazzy new installation.