Van Elle is seeing a boom in Scottish contracts with some high profile sites underway or just completed. The contracts are coming from both new and repeat customers who appreciate the coverage, quality and efficient service we can provide.

The contracts include a variety of sites from retail to large-scale private housing, through to city centre developments and education. We have been contracted for piling and ground stabilisation works.

A new Tesco is underway in Lockerbie and for our client, Barr Construction, we installed load bearing columns and slab piles ready for the foundations.

Nearly a third of the pre-cast piles on site had to be installed alongside a railway line. As Link-up approved contractors we understand the safety issues involved. Using our compact Vemech® rig ensured we were working within the 3m safety zone of the railway line, minimising risks from any potential rig fall.

For the other piles we used our Junttan rig and a total of 520 No piles were installed on the site to depths between 5-7m.

This is a huge site, some 60,000sqm, which used to be the home of the Boots factory. A large-scale, phased residential development has started as a joint venture between Bellway and George Wimpey.

After carrying out the site investigation two years ago we identified the need for a full scale land remediation programme. The design was a blanket grid of drilled holes, spaced at 4.5m across the site, injected with a mixed PFA/OPC fluid grout.

We had up to six rigs on site at any one time and the scale of the project meant the on and off site management had to run like clockwork. The project is a six month programme.

The students and staff at Glasgow high school are desperately in need of more space, so we were called in to provide drilling & grouting services for an up and over extension.

The existing building needed stabilising for its new height and size due to a shallow coal seam, so we had to drill the holes from outside the building at an angle. We then had to use our restricted access rigs to drill the remaining holes inside the building itself and complete the grid pattern.

We injected a 10:1 mixed fluid PFA and OPC grout.

The old Glasgow zoo site provided housing developers Miller Homes with a challenge due to a redundant mineral tunnel running under part of the site. We were contracted to carry out artificial consolidation works.

After probe drilling to better understand the tunnel profile, we re-used these same holes to inject our fluid grout. The tunnel was 3m x 3m and was 20m deep from ground level.

We had to cap the tunnel 200m from the opening to ensure the grout didnt just leak away. Around 3,000 tonnes of mixed fluid grout was injected into the cavity.

Our client, Xircon, are developing a site in Glasgow for city living-style apartments.

We designed a load bearing, CFA piling programme for the site, working across two levels the original ground level and basement level. We used CFA piles on this site because of a railway tunnel and historic building next to the development which both needed protecting from any vibration damage.

We installed 148 No 450mm diameter piles in total between depths of 11m and 8m using our Soilmec 401 rig.