Housing Development

Torwood, Larbert

Torwood, Larbert was the site of a former Primary School, and the development was to build new social council houses.
The development was formed of five blocks of properties, and their construction was of timber frame, thus keeping the loading scenario down to a bearing capacity requirement of 100kN/m². The scheme entailed installing 614 vibro stone columns to depths varying from 2.4m to 3.8m. This was carried out over a period of six days during August 2020.

With this site we looked at more than just the Vibro Stone Column installation, and in order to keep the works all within the one contract we carried out both the Setting out, and the piling mat design.

The piling mat design we carry out with our team of engineers, who understand the rigs which we utilise, which put them in a great position to rationalise the thickness of the piling mat based on the ground assessment from the Site Investigation, but more over from actually visiting site to assess the upper ground profile that is generally not assessed like the soils below 1.0m in any site investigation process. When we carry out piling platform design, we can generally reduce the mat thickness based on outsourcing the works to a temporary works engineer.

We also carried out the setting out of the main points for the vibro stone columns and therefore kept all the risk for setting out and installation of the columns in house and therefore reduced any blame for missing or out of alignment columns.

The Main Contractor Bell Construction approached us to look at a ground improvement solution, but we also helped save significant money and the requirement for numerous sub-contractors by keeping this work in house. We now provide the setting out service via our sister company Atlas Site Engineering, and can also provide through them all the civil setting out requirements for the site, including setting out for service trenched and level surveys for drainage and road construction across a development site.