Trinity Academy St Edward’s, Barnsley

This new high school, designed to the highest specification, caters to 900 pupils aged between 11 and 16, plus 90 staff.

Schools & Further Education - The North, England

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Trinity Academy St Edward’s, Barnsley

Project Overview

This new high school, designed to the highest specification, caters to 900 pupils aged between 11 and 16, plus 90 staff.

The site was a former medical centre in Barnsley, constructed in the 1970s with an area of public open space. Our environmental and geotechnical team were appointed to enable the plot of land to be redeveloped as an educational academy, with a large sports pitch and associated infrastructure. Once the site was unlocked, our civil and structural engineering teams developed the multi-storey teaching block, sports halls and 140-space car park.

Environmental Challenges

Barnsley is an area of heightened coal mining risk, with a known mine shaft located within the site boundary and the surrounding area, along with shallow coal mine workings. Intrusive and non-intrusive ground investigations were also undertaken by Curtins under Coal Authority (CA) permits to refine the mining risks of recorded and unrecorded features of a CA parcel of remediated land.

Previous ground investigation works completed by others did not provide enough detail to inform deeper foundation designs, so a targeted ground investigation was undertaken to support Curtins’ structural engineering design and allow costs for the scheme to be adjusted where necessary.

Services we provided:

Civils & Structures
Geotechnical & Environmental

Client:

Bowmer & Kirkland

We worked with:

Contractor: Bowmer & Kirkland

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The Challenge

A geological fault was recorded to potentially pass through the site near to the proposed buildings.
Due to the previous site use, there was the potential for contamination to be present which would be an unacceptable risk to the future academy users.

Our Solution

Boreholes were drilled to 30m bgl to assess the location and the potential development risks and develop subsequent mitigation.
Environmental testing was undertaken on soil samples and the risk was assessed to be low with the exception of a pocket of ashy made ground.

Added Value

Geophysical Study

Curtins undertook a non-intrusive geophysical survey to understand the below ground stability in relation to shallow mine workings, along with assessment of any unrecorded mining features within the wider proposed sports pitch area. Trial trenching was undertaken to further investigate the ground, and any residual risks were deemed satisfactory for the proposed sports pitch thus reducing potential additional costs to the project.

Gas Monitoring

We assessed ground gas risks with targeted well installations and monitoring, and a detailed assessment to refine the levels of mitigations required to reduce potential unnecessary costs.

Ground Investigations

Additional ground investigation works were scoped and undertaken to provide information to support our grouting specification. This allowed the project cost estimation to be refined and better managed.

Site Supervision

A qualified ground engineer remained present on-site full time during the drilling and grouting remediation works. This allowed ground condition information to be fed to the piling contractor, enabling accurate pricing and designs for piles to be taken to mitigate against any potential pile failure.

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