Netham Park

Our brief was to create a new community centre and football changing facilities in Netham Park, Bristol on a former ICI site with worked coal seams near the surface.

The engineering challenges
The site had several meters of highly contaminated and poorly compacted fill material. Traditional pile foundations would have loaded the worked coal seams and the ground was too poor for strip foundations.

The solutions
We improved the ground using vibro compaction and then “floated” the building on a raft foundation. All contaminated ground was retained on site and “capped” with clean soil, saving considerable landfill costs and reducing the carbon footprint of the build. Another case of creative structural engineering principles being applied to produce an effective design.

Client Bristol City Council
Architect Alec French Architects, Bristol
M&E Engineer Building Service Solutions
Contractor Pollards
QS Peter Ballingall