Gallions Phase 3b Royal Docks
Gallions Phase 3b development will provide 238 homes, of which 76% will be affordable. Located alongside the Thames, the foundations are piled. Tensar value engineered a piling mat solution that greatly minimised the cost and disruption from importing expensive fill material.
Benefits
- £314,000 estimated savings in construction cost for the 8,000m2 piling mat
- 65% thickness reduction, saving on imported fill and excavation depth and an estimated 144 tonnes of carbon emissions
- 30 day time saving estimated for excavation and platform construction
- Estimated 1,700 fewer truck movements through London’s congested streets
With prices for recycled aggregate in London climbing, contractor Lovell was keen to minimise the volume of imported fill for the 8,000m2 piling mat. With the initial design requiring over 1.2m of fill, construction cost and disruption from delivery movements were going to be high.
Tensar were asked to come up with a lower cost piling mat design. Tensar’s initial assessment proposed a mechanically stabilised platform with two layers of Tensar geogrid. However, further review using Tensar’s T-Value method resulted in a platform design with a single layer of Tensar geogrid, enabling a total fill thickness reduction of 65%. The design was validated on site by plate load testing.