Consultants: Arups

Value: £400,000

The Project

Parking and office space in the centre of Dublin is very hard to find, taking this into consideration Pearce Construction were contracted to construct two additional floors on top an existing four story car park. The additional stories would consist of an automated car parking floor with the top floor being used for offices.

Arups being the Design Engineers and Consultants for the project calculated that the existing foundations would be inadequate for the increased loadings which would mean that the existing two metre thick concrete floor which is sat on the infamous Dublin gravels would have to be piled.

The pile design required 364 piles in a 150mm diameter to be installed in close proximity (>400mm) to the existing floor supports. Depending on loadings the piles had to be drilled to depths ranging between 10 and 15m.

Due to the restricted headroom (2.15m) Quantum Geotechnical had to mobilise their Klemm 701 and Sedi 210, which performed extremely well in very difficult ground conditions and circumstances.

As the car park had to remain open, measures were put in place to keep noise to a minimum and adequate ventilation for both work force and members of the public were also required. Programming of drilling locations and the correct routing of all traffic had to be carefully considered throughout the 3 month project.