Following late summer storms at Bewdley in Worcestershire the gardens rising above a house on Cleobury Road had an unwelcome moving experience, pushing retaining walls towards the house and affecting the power supplies and sewerage pipes which passed through the garden. The home owner instigated temporary scaffolding support and Geotechnics was called in to advise the insurers’ agent on the likely cause and solutions to the problem.
Geotechnics Limited was approached by Osiris Projects to assist them in completing an offshore survey for a number of windfarm interconnector cable routes in the German Bight for TenneT Offshore GmbH, a major European electricity transmission system operator.
National Grid’s contractor, Land & Marine Project Engineering Ltd asked Geotechnics Ltd to undertake a geotechnical investigation at an existing overhead line tower site located near Penrhyndeadraeth in North Wales.
Geotechnics Limited are currently undertaking a ground investigation at Wimbleball Dam in North Somerset. The dam, which is some 50m in height, was constructed between 1974 and 1978 using mass concrete buttress foundations benched into the underlying bedrock, and has a storage capacity of around 21,500M litres.
The Port of Liverpool has always had to develop and reinvent itself to meet the changing needs of the world economy. One significant export is scrap and recycled metal, so when Peel Ports, The Port of Liverpool wanted to deepen the berths in the Alexandra Dock to accommodate larger vessels, the condition of the walls and base of the dock needed to be assessed.
To support a planning application for a new treatment unit, United Utilities Water plc required a site investigation to investigate ground conditions and contamination levels in and around Wellington Dock, Liverpool. River bed conditions extending approximately 300m out into the River Mersey for a new outfall structure also needed to be determined.
The impact of European legislation and directives are being felt in the site investigation industry, and the recent introduction of Eurocode 7 has had significant implications for technical reports, in-situ testing, and sampling techniques.
Companies seriously involved in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental investigations are making use of computer technology to manage their work and to record, transmit and store the data which they obtain. Commitment to this concept gave rise to the establishment by the AGS in 1991, of a working group of those involved in data production, use and storage as well as software producers and academic and client bodies, to create a means of transferring, storing and using all the data obtained from site investigations in an electronic format. It was established for industry by industry under chairmanship of Len Threadgold. The first document was published in 1992 and the group has continued to maintain and develop what is now known as the AGS Format since that time.
In October 2010, Geotechnics was asked to look at ways of successfully installing a set of inclinometer access tubes into an embankment, along the top of which lies the main A30 road linking Cornwall to the rest of the country.
In July 2009 Geotechnics Ltd was invited to tender for the Ground Investigation for the proposed redevelopment of Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane ground. The work required was extensive but a key element was that it would have no adverse effect on match days.