Category: News

It’s always great to see one of our designs put into practice. The photos in this post show a slope rehabilitation project recently completed using soil nail reinforcement techniques in Monkstown, Co. Cork. The slope was designed in accordance with BS 8006-2:2011 (Code of practice for strengthened/reinforced soils. Part 2: Soil nail design) and was constructed using Ischebeck Titan hollow bars and PVC-coated hexagonal steel wire mesh. Sacrificial and production soil nail testing was carried out to confirm the design assumptions made. A particular challenge for the contractor was the management of traffic on the busy single carriageway road at the toe of the slope. Zero tail swing plant were employed to great effect and the practicality of the project would have been very different without the utilisation of modern zero tail swing excavators and MEWPs. The slope is slowly beginning to green up and will blend into the landscape in due course.

We were delighted to attend the 32nd meeting of CEN TC250/SC7 (the committee responsible for Eurocode 7)  in Oslo on 22nd and 23rd May to discuss the direction of development of the 2nd generation of Eurocode 7, the harmonised standard for geotechnical design throughout Europe and further afield.

The aims of development are the simplification of the basis of geotechnical design, the reduction in Nationally Determined Parameters (NDPs) and the improvement of the accessibility and ease of use of the document. Significant changes are likely coming in the revised standard due after 2020, including replacement of the current Design Approaches with a simpler scheme, broadening the range of designs covered in detail to include reinforced soil and soil nailing, and changes in layout to make the new standard easier to navigate.

We were delighted to assist the students from Portmarnock Community School and Action Ireland Trust with validation during a hectic and fun 24 hour mapathon that took place on 5th and 6th May. The mapathon was part of the school’s ongoing commitment to improving civic life in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. While the school, with Fingal County Council’s technical assistance, has been working since 2014 to create an open, free basemap of the Kingdom, the aim this time was to improve the tagging of buildings and farm land to assist in spatial planning. The Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team tasking manager recorded that over 300,000 edits had been made by Portmarnock CS mappers in the 24 hours, which was certainly a significant achievement!

More information, and information on getting involved, is available from the #MapLesotho project, Action Ireland Trust, and the award-winning Global Citizens Mapping the Future initiative within Portmarnock CS.