Jesus Green, Cambridge
Walking On Water – Or Working Under Watercourses?
EDF either value the quality of our work to a very high degree or they can’t find anyone else to take on the difficult jobs!
But we’re not complaining; we love a challenge and drilling beneath Jesus Green in Cambridge to lay 3 X 180 SDR11 Cable Ducts 150 mtrs using D80X100 drill rig doesn’t come any more problematic.
It wasn’t the soil type (terrace gravels) and it wasn’t the complexity of the job – but if we thought the ground staff at Lords Cricket Ground were twitchy enough (and justifiably so given the hallowed nature of that turf) then we hadn’t reckoned with the squads of green guardians from the Parks Authority; the arboreal centre; the council’s environment department as well as truly concerned local residents.
One disrupted tree root and we were quite clearly going to leap to the top of the Cambridge City “Most Wanted” list.
In the two (strictly) scheduled weeks it took us to do the job we didn’t disturb a single leaf. But with very tight access we had major problems manoeuvring around a site where we weren’t allowed to go under any of the tree canopy.
Added to all that was the need to drill and install well below the water course on the Green and across Victoria Avenue.
Although the majority of drilling fluids were recycled, safe removal of the remanding slurry was the most difficult part of the job given all the restrictions and doing that without disrupting the City traffic was our only failure. But bearing in mind that even a cat crossing the road in Cambridge will jam the streets for hours we really were on a hiding to nothing when we needed to manoeuvre, load and unload for only five or ten minutes!
As always, no problem was insurmountable and this has been just another job finished according to spec, on time with no complaints – from anyone.