Barking Riverside

Barking Riverside London is a partnership between the Mayor of London and L&Q, a leading UK residential developer. The purpose of the HDD’s was to allow UKPN and Clancy Docwra to divert circuits from the development land to facilitate Barking Riverside’s plan of achieving 10,800 new homes on the site. To enable this, two parallel 520m long HDD’s were undertaken by McCormack Drilling which involved crossing Goresbrook which is a tributary of the River Thames, both bores passed under the river at 14m cover.

Geology

The ground make-up consisted mainly of river terrace deposits from the Kellaway Formation overlain by alluvium and large band of made ground at the surface. In total there were 59 existing historical boreholes in the immediate vicinity of the HDD, mostly running parallel along Choats Road. Inadvertent returns of drill fluid was a concern so the design not only had to address the tricky sands and gravels present, but the routing of the HDD had to take into account the positioning of the existing boreholes and infrastructure of the site.

The result

The result was two parallel s-type long compound curves at a depth of 24m, both were installed successfully and completing UKPN’s largest HDD project in London as of Spring 2019.

"The McCormack, UKPN and Clancy team worked closely together to deliver the works under very difficult constraints and timescales. The professionalism and expertise of the team were evident every day they worked on site – even providing an educational visit to the wider Barking Riverside team." - Claire Morrison UKPN Project Manager