Colzium Estate - Ground Developments Ltd

Colzium Estate

Project Summary

Residential development – 162 new homes (100,000m³ of earthworks/soil stabilisation).
Ground Developments’ role as enabling works contractor was to carry out earthworks and drainage for the site and leave a soil-stabilised end product for roads and building platforms.

The Challenge

The major problem with numerous new sites throughout Scotland and Northern England comes from poor quality (waterlogged, peat, overlying) materials being inherent within the sites. The role of a soil stabilisation contractor is to ensure delivery of a foundation solution that meets the required loading specification for the roads, building platforms, etc.

That stabilised product is produced to 95% dry density with various CBR requirements. Due to the stringent end bearing requirements for roads and housing platforms, Ground Developments became the UK industry leader for residential soil stabilisation solutions, leading to higher end product outputs for their clients.

To achieve these solutions, the Ground Developments team took to encouraging engineers to provide attribute rich datasets, but sometimes the level of information coming from service providers and some engineers was still lacking. Therefore, in a roundabout way, the as-built data going back to the client was often better than the data being received. In some respects, they were almost ‘reverse engineering’ the site.

The Solution

As the requirements for stabilisation became paramount, the utilisation of technology became even more important. Ground Developments invested in 12d Model software for design and survey purposes, to ensure they could deliver quality results faster and more effectively. Through the use of 12d Model and GPS machine control, they revolutionised the development of soil stabilised building platforms in the region.

They used several facets of 12d Model to assist in their works, including:

• Detailed Alignment Design for road design, boxing and haul roads

• Volumetrics and TIN Analysis for volumetrics (inclusive of on-site instant analysis using 12d Field

• 12d Survey/12d Field for as-built and on-site analysis, monitoring and data collection.

They also used several other features within 12d Model for quality assurance purposes, inclusive of pipe sizing, conformance surveys, as-built surveys, and reporting and visuals.

The primary benefit came from the delivery of exact layers in stabilised platforms. Using a combination of binders and soils, the team generated a mixed soil solution which had to be laid in exact depths to meet compliance requirements. This was generated from surveying the excavated levels using 12d Field, and then analysis of the slope/surface. They then further compared the final formation level. From this, they produced an optimised design surface for Machine control. They could then export the data almost instantly to ensure grading the layers to exact depth requirements.

Upon completion of the layers, they carried out conformance surveys to ensure that they were delivering within design tolerances.

The team further utilised 12d Field for drainage works in both setout and as-built. The advantages of utilising 12d came from the chains that they set up for processing the datasets into a deliverable output. This includes the sizing of pipes (which assists in working out inevitable conflict that the utilities providers would then have with the constructed networks). This provided the team with the advantage of being in the best position to provide information on the site.

The Result

They automatically generated drainage deliverables through chains and the utilisation of some handy macros for outputting. This automatic generation was also implemented for their volume and site analysis, which again was hastened through chains. They were greatly advantaged by the ability to generate these outputs while on site, using 12d Model with 12d Field.