Relevel key to continued safe operation

In South West England one of Europe's largest, newly constructed, bottling facilities had become subject to the effects of settlement. The implications of the settlement were to have far reaching consequences for all the stakeholders involved in the original construction and the incumbent tenant.

The facility in question is over 80,000 m2 and the problems began after the tenant moved in and commenced operations. As the facility was loaded it began to experience significant slab settlement making the entire facility unstable. The maximum settlement experienced on site was 36mm.

Uretek says: "We designed a solution based on the level survey drawings which would relevel the slabs, bringing them back to within 4mm from the original spec. The process involved injection of geopolymers beneath the slab across the facility which would raise and relevel the floor.

In terms of our ground engineering process, we designed a programme of work based upon the site drawings that would require three passes; meaning that we would inject the areas that showed the greatest drop in level first, we’d repeat that process on the same area and all other areas that had a slightly lower level of settlement and finally a third pass where all areas would be treated to bring all the slabs back to within 4mm of their required levels."

For this project Uretek designed small purpose-built mobile pumping units that would fit within the aisles of the facility and meet all health and safety criteria. This crucially allowed the business operations to continue unaffected in aisles adjacent to where we we worked and as the process only requires electricity to power the pumps, there were no environmental or hazardous implications.

As Uretek went through the process of ground injection, it substantiated every lift using laser monitoring. In order to verify those levels an independent surveyor was also contracted to conduct additional monitoring.

The Uretek process has secured the future of the facility and our fast, isolated treatment programme ensure operations could continue unabated. Due to the excessively weak ground soils however, this particular facility floor will continue to move as a permanent solution was not viable; consequently there will be six-monthly assessments for future treatment with Uretek on standby to relevel where necessary.