Case Study: Permanent Sheet Pile Basement, Stephen Perse Foundation

Permanent Sheet Pile Basement, Stephen Perse Foundation

Contract No:C1155
Client:Kier Construction Ltd
Location:Cambridge
Value:Approximately £280,000.00
Summary:Design, Supply and installation of sheet piles, to form a permanent watertight basement.

Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd have recently completed the construction of a new basement at Stephen Perse Foundation School in Cambridge for Kier Construction Ltd.

Once completed the project will provide a new Senior School with Sports facility for the independent group of schools based in Cambridge which was originally founded in 1881 as the Perse School for Girls.

The permanent basement was designed by Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd in-house design team who proposed a solution to provide a complete cantilever solution in the temporary condition to assist the Main Contractor with the construction of the basement for follow on trades thus providing significant programme and cost benefits over a basement requiring temporary propping.

Working closely with the Clients Consulting Engineer (Smith & Wallwork), Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd developed the design to ensure that the main criteria for the design and installation of the sheet piles forming the permanent basement were achieved which included the following:-

  • Sheet piles installed to limit noise and vibration due to the urban location of the works within an existing ‘live’ school environment.
  • Sheet piles designed to support adjacent building foundation loads.
  • Sheet piles design to accommodate strict deflection limits to limit potential damage to existing building and service.
  • Sheet piles to be designed to cantilever in temporary condition for ease of construction of basement works by follow-on trades.

By taking advantage of Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd unique position of being able to design and install highly efficient Emirates Steel Z sheet pile section using Silent Vibrationless Pile Pressing methods, our experienced in-house design team provide a solution which satisfied all the above criteria to the approval of the Client Design Team and all relevant Third Parties.

On completion of excavation works to formation level of the basement, the exposed sheet pile interlocks were welding using our in-house welding and fabrication team to provide a 100% watertight basement.

 

In total 262No. Emirate Steel EZ18-630 sheet piles were installed using a Giken Z Pile Press serviced by our Sennebogen 70Te Crawler Crane over a 7 week installation period.

All works were completed in November 2016 to the satisfaction of all parties.

Throughout the course of the works, an on-site live streaming video system was utilised to record the progress of the works and links to the details recorded during the construction of the basement can be found at the following http://stephenperse.reachtimelapse.co.uk/newseniorschool/.