The construction of an industrial development over soft ground, and a former swamp area in Dee Why NSW posed significant difficulties and costs for the project developer due to the cost of constructing the piles for the building footings.
Shirley Consulting Engineers proposed that as the proposed buildings were ‘tilt-up’ concrete panels founded on a raft style footings, an economical alternative would be to pre-consolidate the natural substrata so that the industrial buildings could be constructed on a high-level ‘raft-type” footing system.
SCE then undertook a detailed investigation of the ground conditions, planned & reviewed the pre-consolidation of the natural strata and placement of the final building support fill which included geosynthetic & geogrid reinforcement.
Several years after the successful completion of the project, SCE was asked to review the construction for the project’s finance organisation [viz: the Commonwealth Bank] and found that the buildings had all performed satisfactorily since the construction.