Client - Mackley (Team Van Oord)

 

Duration - 104 Weeks

 

Value - £4,230,000

 

Project - The removal, storage and re-use of approx. 100,000 m3 of topsoil mostly under a watching brief by the archaeologists, the construction off an earth built flood defence bund, approx 300,000 m3 in volume as well as a further 100,000 m3 from flood storage areas into new bird island habitat. Selected site found clay and gravel materials from borrow pits and the excavation and creation of wildlife ponds, ditches and general salt marsh habitat as well as various diversion channels and flood storage areas was used for this purpose. The work also involved installing approximately 60,000 tonnes of 3-6 tonne rock armour and 30,000 tonnes of 40 to 2000 kg rip-rap stone. All of the works was carried out using either machine mounted or hand used survey systems which received and relayed information to and from TVOs base station, this data was used to actually create the as built drawings and model. Without doubt the most spectacular element of the scheme once the defence system was in place was the removal of 50,000 m3 of existing shingle beach frontage to allow the sea to flow into the new defence area. In a single stroke previous and long established fresh water marsh became tidal salt marsh. During this scheme we were heavily involved with the Environmental Agency, Team Van Oord and the RSPB in bringing this scheme to a successful completion and we are proud to have been involved with this unique scheme. In closing this was achieved despite suffering the wettest summer on record during 2012 which basically brought the job to a grinding halt and required carefull planning and reactions to get back to a position to meet key dates.

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Links - https://www.ice.org.uk/knowledge-and-resources/case-studies/managed-realignment-at-medmerry-sussex