Following on from the successful working relationship developed during the previous AMP4, Geotechnics Limited submitted a detailed quality, environmental, technical and commercial proposal to deliver the highest standards of investigation services required by north west based utilities supplier.

Working from the Company’s Chester office, the existing project team is now looking forward to involvement on new schemes across the region. 

Joint Managing Director John Booth (right) signs the AMP5 Framework Contract with Bill O’Connell, Category Buyer for United Utilities.

Boulby mine is on the Cleveland coast and is Europe’s second deepest mine at 1200m below ground level.  Paul Hayes managed to arrange a trip down the mine for a small party of Chester office engineers (John Booth, Keith Nicholls, Stuart McCrae), and guests (Sam Fishburne, Dave Cage and Geoff Booth). 

The day started with a presentation from Neil Rowley – Health and Safety Manager (Cleveland Potash) on the history of the mine, local geology, and mining operations.  Following a safety briefing, the team was kitted out in fetching hi-vis yellow/orange kit, and several of the less self conscious preferred shorts rather than overalls.  The temperature at the working face gets up to around 40˚C so this turned out to be a good choice!

Then it was off to the man riding cage at one of the two main shafts.  Once in the shaft the cage takes about 6 minutes to descend to pit bottom.  Around the shaft bottom there are stores and work shop areas.  All the equipment and spares has to be brought down the shafts in sections, so vehicles and mining equipment are built and maintained in these workshops by a team of fitters and electricians.  Transportation underground is by transit van or land rover, each vehicle stripped out to reduce weight and fire risk, and each vehicle with a team of miners, drillers, or visitors crammed in, looking like something from hi-vis Mad Max.

Neil Rowley then took the team about 7km out under the North Sea along the main mine haulage route.  Most of the access tunnels are mined in the lower halite (rock salt) beds because these rocks are more stable than the overlying potash beds.  At the current working face, an access ramp takes the haulage route into the potash beds, where a team of miners operates a rotating face cutter, loads the potash onto dump trucks which load the ore through a primary crusher and onto conveyors for transport to the shaft and then to the surface.  At current market rates the potash is ten to fifteen times more valuable than the halite from the lower strata, so potash is mined at two faces five days a week, and salt from one face at weekends.

The geology and rock mechanics of the potash and halite beds is key to the economic viability of the mine.  Horizontal exploration holes are drilled in prospective new areas of mining.  Drilling commences in the halite and then the holes are angled upwards into the potash.  A gamma ray probe then tests the quality of the potash, anything over 30% pure is considered viable, so most future planning of mining operations relies heavily on the geologist’s predictions.  The drill hole seen by the Geotechnics team was about 250m in, but the core logging looked pretty easy – salt all the way!

Having seen the drilling, mining and roof bolting operations at the working face, it was back to the shaft and to the surface for a shower and a refreshing cup of tea.  Many thanks to Neil Rowley and his colleagues at Cleveland Potash for their generous hospitality.

Under BS EN 1997, Class 1 undisturbed samples are required for triaxial and oedometer testing.  Current practice under BS5930 has permitted the use of U100 undisturbed samples for these tests, however, this is not compliant with BS EN 1997, which (at best) classes U100 samples as Class 2 samples. 

Geotechnics Limited are pleased to announce that we are able to obtain Class 1 samples from boreholes using either piston sampling in very low strength/extremely low strength cohesive soils, or by using thin walled open drive tube (UT100) samplers, similar to those described in Gosling and Baldwin (Ground Engineering, March 2010) in low, medium, high and very high strength cohesive soils.

It should be noted the UT100 sample tubes and cutting shoes are manufactured from a high grade steel that needs to be imported, which could restrict the availability of these tubes over the next few months.  Geotechnics Limited are one of only a handful of companies in the UK to own the thin walled UT100 samplers.

 John Booth (Joint Managing Director), John Hutchinson (Project Engineer), Jonathan Gray (Site Supervisor), and Alan Jones (Driller) were on hand to guide the assessor through the works planning and management procedures, and were able to demonstrate how these were carried out on site.  The audit focussed on three main areas of our site management, the scores on the day being

Health & Safety  95.3%
Environment       95.1%
Quality                96.4% 

It is pleasing to note that these scores are noticeably above industry standards for our type of work, and shows that the  hard work and knowledge invested by all staff has paid off.

 36 Vibrating Wire Piezometers, 23 Uniaxial In-Place-Inclinometer (IPI) strings (comprising a total of 126 sensors) and 2 Hydrostatic Profile Gauges (HPG) were installed to provide data during the construction of embankments along the new Weymouth Relief Road in Dorset.  

Remote monitoring was made possible by installing 5 multi-channel dataloggers equipped with GSM modems which transmitted data to an off-site server.  This processed the data and presented it on a website for real-time viewing by Amey, the Consultant Engineer, at their offices in East Sussex.  

For more details of the project please see our Case Study

The awards, hosted by Stand up comedian Alun Cochrane, were presented at the prestigious 5 star Grosvenor House Hotel, on London’s Park Lane.  Attended by over 200 leaders in consultancy and contracting in the geotechnical engineering industry, these awards brought together the key players in the industry and the ones to watch.

Despite the heaviest snow for years, it was still business as usual for Geotechnics South West office. 

Heavy snow on the 6th January at Wendron, near Helston in Cornwall, didn’t stop Geotechnics carrying out a cable percussion borehole investigation at a new water treatment works infrastructure project.

Using 4WD vehicles, the drilling crew and Engineer Ben Tucker managed to mobilise to site and complete the investigation on schedule.

Geotechnics South West office has been in need of increased accommodation for some time and has now moved to new, larger premises with excellent facilities, storage and office accommodation.

The new self contained building lies on the B3181, Pinhoe Road and is within two miles of our old office and one mile from Junction 29 of the M5.  It has improved local access and parking and maintains its position relative to the main road and national motorway network.

Not only has the address changed but also the telephone number and fax. 

Email addresses remain the same.

The Geotechnical Centre,

This move underlines the Company’s commitment to the area and to continued growth in geotechnology and geoenvironmental sciences which are so vital to sustainable and safe development.