Background
In November 2015 Newham Borough Council working with BAM Nuttell commenced work on a 4 year project to upgrade infrastructure and highways to a number of rail stations so as to facilitate increased projected use due to the near completion of various TFL sites. The scope of the £6m project was to facilitate the installation of new infrastructure and service feeds to a number of stations and considerably widen neighbouring footpaths to facilitate the increased footfall.
Adiens Involvement
From working with Newham Borough Council, on a number of prior successful surveys, Adien were contracted to carry out a number of Electronic Trialholes around 3 stations to facilitate the evaluation of existing drawings and records. This was to better understand the volumes of services in the areas and to compare the findings to the statutory undertakers records and evaluate the accuracies present.
As a result of Adiens findings, Newham borough Council decided that due to the quantity of additional located services, which were not identified on existing records, the whole of the potential work area needed to be surveyed. Due to health and safety concerns and the associated commercial aspects of the project, most of the area would require to be dug by hand due to the sheer volume of services located, as the findings of the survey would dictate which methods of design and implementation would be used for the project.
The resulting utility drawings with the proposed new layouts/scope were then used as part of the installation and digging crews permit to work/break ground.
Adien provided the project management team and their supervisors with a pictorial guide of the markings that would be present on the ground, offering clear indication as to service type present so far as is reasonably practicable.
All parties were invited to a workshop at ADIEN’s head office where we demonstrated methods of location utilised and the limitations of the technology and that the median expectation is an 85% success rate.
Final mark outs of completed site surveys.
Benefits to the project
- ADIEN have achieved a 92.8% detection rate over the entirety of the project.
- As part of a risk reduction and costing exercise ADIEN undertook surveys in areas with highly populated services, to confirm and quantify the amount of hand digging and therefore the associated costs to be included within the pre-contract estimate.
- Allowed finite planning of the routes to be undertaken so that the number of services encountered was minimised.
- Provided the installation teams with structured information of the hazards to be encountered within the areas covered in the work permits and associated service drawings.
- Production of real time mark outs of the hazards on the ground.
- Improved the planning and implementation of road crossings whilst minimising the time required to carry them out as a result of improved selection of route thus mitigating potential service damage.
- Minimisation of disruption to supply and improving the health and safety offered to third parties and employees by profoundly reducing the amount of conventional excavation that was required.
Success of the project
Due to the poor quality of information and consequential risk of service interruption experienced in the past on construction projects within the Borough, both the Newham Borough Council and Bam Nuttell expressed major concerns that there was a real potential risk of harm to individuals, commercial operations and the public. In the event it is therefore acknowledged by the whole project team that the number of service strikes encountered during the works has been extremely low. This is predominately due to the quality of the survey works and QA procedures undertaken and implemented by ADIEN in support of the professional installation teams carrying out the work, This includes the upfront checking of relevant existing construction and utility drawings and cross referencing with surveys that have been undertaken, to produce an overall master drawing showing all known and previously unknown services.
The project was delivered ahead of programme and within budget. As a result of these successful works Adien were then awarded the works package to survey the entirety of the highways in Stratford city centre.
