Industry consultancy Cromwell Wood Estate Company has provided an update on its various projects and developments across the UK.

Housing

The company have been advising on the building of a stone block retaining wall using locally sourced quarried block stone instead of using gabion walling. The project is for five houses and the client required a tiered garden area and slope support. Cromwell Wood have advised on the size of the blocks and method of construction to ensure support for the excavation and the drainage of the land to provide an aesthetic feature to the prestigious development.

Company surveyors continue to advise on housing sites for SME Builders and are involved in four sites in West Yorkshire dealing with engineering the formation levels, flood risk and drainage, brownfield regeneration and geotechnical support.

In addition, a number of coal mining risk assessments have been completed through the winter and its mining engineers are now involved in filling and capping off three shafts after investigating the previous mine owner's shaft caps.


Elsewhere, Cromwell Wood has completed a number of phase 1 and phase 2 investigations for SME builders and self build clients over the winter and site works are about the commence in spring 2017.

Commercial Development

Cromwell Wood's engineers are advising on the design and groundworks for a large portal frame building that is being built in the exposed coal field where there have been shallow coal mine workings and two seams are known to be within 10 metres of the surface. A successful solution has been designed for the slab and ground conditions and work is to begin later this year. Engineers will supervise the excavation works and provide a validation report to the Planning Authority.

Work has also been carried some ground investigations works on a former colliery site to assess whether the site is developable for a transport and logistic centre, as it was a former opencast site and prior to that the land was used for an underground coal mine. Further information is being collected on samples of strata and made ground to assess the suite of engineering works required.

Quarrying

The company is involved in a number of minerals development opportunities which include planning advice, reserve assessment, environmental permitting and valuation. The planning team is project managing five applications at this present time for aggregate, buildings stone and clay.

In addition, Cromwell Wood has identified three sources of good quality brick earth and fireclay for the brick making industry with reserves of over 250,000 tonnes which is currently available with planning permissions and permits.

www.cromwellwood.org

Image: Stone retaining wall for housing development in Calderdale.