BAM Nuttall and Mott MacDonald have recently carried out much needed flood defence works at Avonmouth in the Southwest of England. The work is part of major flood defences along the river Severn estuary and involved the installation of 26,250 linear meters of steel piles along 2100m of shoreline. In addition to this, concrete walls and flood gates were constructed as part of the battle to project 2,500 homes against rising see levels.
As part of this work BAM Nuttall called upon ABI Equipment to help with the piling solution for the project. An ABI TM20 Mobilram with powerful MRZV36VV variable frequency, variable static moment vibrator undertook the sheet piling work. The installed piles were Arcelor AZ36-700 pairs up to 14.5m long which were driven in conjunction with vibration monitoring at key nearby structures.
During the piling works it was discovered that on some sections of the pile line there were several deep ground obstructions that prevented the installation of the sheet piles. It was decided to core through these locations using a Delmag RH28 drilling rig. The rig carried out the coring work on a 500m stretch of made ground using a guide frame at ground level for precise positional control. The ground was found to comprise high quantities of steel reinforced concrete to a depth of 8-10m, which was cleared using the RH28.
You can read the full case study here on our Case Studies page.
