Optera – Emergency Scaffold for Subsidence – Retaining Wall & Bank Stabilisation, Stroud
Background
We were called by Optera in July 2023 with probably one of the most unusual scaffold requests yet.. we need to build a scaffold so we can put a digger on a roof! Our response, ‘Right.. ok.. lets do this!’
Optera are leading structural repair specialists, working for the domestic insurance sector. One area they specialise in are land slips and ground movement. Their client needed their expertise with a property near Stroud, Gloucestershire and like many properties in the area, the property was built into a steep hill. Unfortunately, the bank behind had significant ground movement and the earth slid into the property. Fortunately, no one was hurt from the land sliding into the building however Optera needed to come up with an access solution quickly, so they could stablaise the bank and get the rubble out and away from the property.
The access challenge for Optera was that there was a single storey, flat roof extension on the property which was right next to where the bank slipped into the original house. In order to get the mass of earth and rubble out, they needed a minimum of a 3.5 tonne excavator to remove the soil safely and effectively. The only way they could do this was to sit the excavator on top of the roof and dig behind and adjacent to the extension. Here’s where they innovatively thought about scaffolding to provide this solution, as there was no way the roof itself would be able to support these weights.
“Optera are a specialist contractor providing cost effective and innovative structural solutions to a variety of insurance lead projects.
We were instructed to remedy a land slip to the back of a domestic property in Stroudm Gloucestershire. This gave us a number off hurdles to overcome. The first would be getting into a land locked garden to remove the fallen material which measured in the tens of tons. If we could not come up with a mechanical solution this whole project would have to be done by shovel and bucket.
The house had a single-story flat roof addition the other side of this addition was the back garden where the landslip impacted. It was our idea to build an exoskeleton scaffold engineered for bearing weight. This is a very unusual request to any scaffold company and as you can imagine there were a few “you want to do what!”.
I tried several companies with no joy before ringing Natalie at MTS scaffolding. I explained I wanted to drive a 3-ton digger onto the roof of a house. There were a few questions I could not answer or explain over the phone, so their team came out to site the next day for a site meeting. I explained exactly what we wanted and asked is this possible their replay was “of course” in fact throughout the project they were just as accommodating as they were to take on the project, however small their input would need to be. I had an almost impossible 1-week deadline to get the scaffold up, they committed immediately with engineered designs 2 days later after they sent us the engineered plans we agreed.
They worked over their weekend so we could meet our deadline if I ever have a project that needs this level of scaffold I would most definitely ask for their support again.”
Challenges
We worked together with TAD scaffolding designs to put not only a digger on a roof but a series of scaffold ramps to get it up there! Optera also needed to support a track barrow, tools and their team on the scaffold too with enough space to work safely. This was a challenge in itself; however we had many other access challenges ourselves, predominately because we could only get a transit sized vehicle to the property with no where to park or store any scaffolding. The amount of scaffolding equipment needed to support the project was extreme, so the logistics of this project was perhaps the biggest challenge for us, rather than the actual build. We also had to build the ramps in stages as the excavator went up to the roof and take them back down again straight away so there was space for Optera to work within the tight workspace they already had.
Results
We built three scaffold ramps in total to allow the excavator to track up the building without the gradient being too steep. Then we fixed 20 x 6m alloy lattice beams over the roof to support the scaffold over the top which would carry he dynamic load of the digger, tools and contractors. We completed the build within 1 week and the overall project duration was 12 weeks. The scaffold contract value of this project was £18,900.00. Completed on time and within budget.
