Broadmead redevelopment
Bachy Soletanche, the leading geotechnical specialist, has commenced piling work at Bristol’s Broadmead centre as part of a high-profile redevelopment of the city-centre shopping precinct. In a project that is one of the country’s biggest city-centre regeneration programmes for fifty years, the piling work carried out by Bachy Soletanche will help to create the foundations for impressive new commercial and leisure facilities planned for the extended Broadmead centre.
In a two-phase programme worth £1.1m, Bachy Soletanche will construct a total of 580 piles, most of which will be used in the creation of a secant wall that will provide support for the new retail and leisure space being constructed, as well as delineate the re-routing of a road around the border of the extended centre.
Bachy Soletanche has one Continuous Flight Auger (CFA) rig on site to construct the piles in a tight programme that will see the final phase of piling work complete during May this year. Drew Fraser, Engineer at Bachy Soletanche commented:
“The time constraints are very tight at Broadmead, but through detailed planning and liaison with the main contractor Edmund Nuttall the piling work is running according to schedule.”
“We have a vast amount of experience in projects like this, which has helped us to create an efficient programme as well as solve any on-site problems quickly and productively.” He added.
The £500m regeneration project will result in the creation of around one million sq ft of retail and leisure space in the Merchants Quarter of Bristol and is expected to be completed in Autumn 2008.