Hydraulic Vertical Shoring Northcote Auckland

Project Type

Water Main Installation

Location

Auckland, New Zealand

Services Provided

Hydraulic Vertical Shoring (Vertishores)

Challenge

A 36m long 800mm wide and 1500mm deep open excavation had to be shored to install a 400mm water main. Numerous sections like this had to be done over 3 months.  There are multiple services including the main fibre line that supplies the Northcote and surrounding areas.

The excavation is in the road starting from the sidewalk 800mm into the road. Traffic still must flow daily, with lengthy road closures not being possible. They only have space and access for a small digger that will not be able to handle and lift the Ultra Shields. They also wanted the edge of the trench to have protection for the site workers.

Solution

We recommended that the customer use a positive shoring option that can be easy and light weight to install and navigate between the services. Our Vertishores were the best option, both practical and affordable.

Their Engineer sent all the relevant information, Geo Technical Report, and recommended dimensions for the trench. We then sent this to our Mabey Engineering Team to do the Engineering and Temporary Works Design. Our design gave them 1.2m between each Vertishore and the use of double 2.4m x 1.2m x 19mm marine ply as backing to cover the sides of the trench walls.

Result

The customer installed 30 of the Vertishore soldiers with mostly 2.1m rails spaced 1.2m apart and this also gave them 600mm of rail above ground level. With the marine ply installed vertically they had edge protection of 900mm above ground level. They only had two labourers and the supervisor so using the Vertishores was great for them as they could easily install and remove them without the use of machinery. As they had to pull the section of 30m pipe (2 lengths of 15m PPE wipe welded together) into the trench they removed the first three to four Vertishores and installed them horizontally to accommodate the bending radius of the pipe. This way they were able to pull in the pipe and still have the first section of the trench shored up at all times.

 

No other solution would have given them this flexibility.