Specialists Awards 2012 Ground Engineering WINNER ECO FOUNDATIONS


Eco Foundations is leading research into soil-mixing in the remediation of contaminated land at Cambridge University. The project involves large-scale fi eld trials


FINALISTS HIGHLY COMMENDED: GALLDRIS CONSTRUCTION


BALFOUR BEATTY GROUND ENGINEERING


GROUNDFORCE


O’KEEFE CONSTRUCTION (GREENWICH) O’KEEFE UTILITIES VAN ELLE


JUDGES’ COMMENT


“As a small business, Eco Foundations’ commitment to research and development is impressive”


Midlands-based piling contractor Eco Foundations is a ground improvement specialist that carries out two types of soil mixing for geotechnical and environmental applications. These are known as mass stabilisation and deep soil mixing. In the last year, it has


successfully developed and implemented the use of its own large diameter twin paddle soil- mixing system, led a pioneering research and development trial with Cambridge University, and generated profi t for the fi rst time since the company was founded fi ve years ago. One of its most recent and


challenging projects was to improve a 4.5 ha brownfi eld site for the Welsh Water Pipeline Project. Soil mixing carried out by Eco Foundations improved the ground so that it could support a new sewer diversion. Soil-mixed columns, 1,500 mm


in diameter, were installed through soft silts, alluvial deposits, soft clays and peat up to 8 m deep and founded on sand, using Eco Foundations’ in-house designed twin paddle soil-mixing


42 | 5 April 2012


system attached to a 65 tonne RTG RG19T telescopic leader rig. There were no arisings that resulted in cost savings, as there was no spoil to remove from site. Soil-mixing provided savings


of about 8.5 per cent of the client’s initial budget for the project. The company is also leading


research into soil mixing in the remediation of contaminated land at Cambridge University. The project involves equipment and software development and validation, laboratory studies, large-scale fi eld trials, in-situ testing, sampling and monitoring, laboratory testing of fi eld samples and dissemination activities. Eco Foundation’s aim over


the next fi ve years is to increase turnover by off ering the widest range of retaining wall structures available from a single supplier, developing innovative soil- mixing machinery that can respond to challenging situations and delivering high- quality, environmentally friendly and economical ground engineering solutions to the construction industry.


FOCUS ROBERT MCGALL


Robert McGall formed geotechnical company Eco Foundations in 2007 with AGD Equipment’s managing director Robert Law. His aim was to make soil mixing the more sustainable alternative to other ground improvement methods in the UK. In soil mixing, soil is mixed in-situ with a binder, to improve or stabilise the ground. In 2010, Mr McGall, now technical


director of Eco Foundations, was spurred on to make more use of the technique in the UK after witnessing the ‘triple mixing head’ system to build cut-off walls and retaining walls in Germany. He was impressed by the high degree of homogeneous mixing and quality control. Realising that it would be difficult


to use a single column auger mixing tool to achieve this degree of mixing, he successfully inspired the design, development and manufacture of a “double rotary mixing head” to do the job. This achieved a similar level of homogeneity and quality control as the triple auger head.


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