Piling and foundation specialist Van Elle Ltd. have won a restricted access piling contract For Dandara Jersey Ltd. to construct temporary and permanent piled retaining walls to facilitate the construction of the basement to the new Hotel Rex on Saviours Road St Hellier Jersey.

The sloping site required careful planning and pile design to accommodate the various heights and surcharges on each of the sloping sections. Because of this only a limited site investigation was available. As a result, piling site foreman Gary Hall carried out probing to determine the rock outfall and relayed the information back to Van Elle's chief design engineer Abid Adekunte who then designed the piles to stop short of the rock thereby reducing the cost to the client. Abid commented, " The contours of the site raised a number of potential problems that had to be taken in to account, not only in terms of the pile design and site conditions but also our client Dandara had an issue with the propping of the wall in certain areas and requested that sections were cantilevered instead of propped as was the original proposal. We were able to accommodate this in the design resulting in a reduction in the programme and the elimination of any temporary propping."

Two weeks prior to mobilisation Dandara requested an additional section be piled and included in the design. " By talking to us early in the design process we were able to iron out most of the issues prior to starting on site thereby allowing us and our client to avoid any embarrassing extra costs, but also enabling us to meet the tight programme." Commented Andy Howard, Van Elle's contracts manager.

Progress on site is going well site with 127no. 300mm diameter piles being installed up to 9.5m deep using a Hutte HBR205 restricted access piling rig. In addition 9no. 300mm diameter piles are being installed for the tower crane base with 1 metre deep rock sockets using a down the hole hammer. Van Elle expect to be completed ahead of programme and on budget.

"This is a good example of how working together with the piling specialist has enabled us to adopt a value engineered solution which suits the needs of the site and our build programme" said Dandara's contracts manager Stuart Wearden.