Mackley has been busy on site at Havant Thicket Reservoir with our colleagues at Future Water, a joint venture project with Jones Bros Civil Engineering UK.
The concrete culvert for the reservoir outlet pipe will be around 232m long and 12m high, running through the main embankment and connecting to the reservoir pipeline being constructed by Ward & Burke. As this is a crucial piece of infrastructure at the reservoir, a 3m trial section of the future culvert was cast, away from its final location to inform its design and construction.
Mackley constructed this trial culvert which provided the opportunity to test the construction methodology that will ultimately be used for the 19 sections of culvert which will be poured in situ using bespoke formwork. We were able to test various concrete providers and identify ways that the formwork can be erected and then subsequently moved along to build the adjacent section more efficiently. The success of this trial means that we will be able to confidently move forward to the first section of the permanent work applying everything learned from the trial.
The formwork itself will be used for the permanent works and the trial culvert will be kept on site and used as a teaching resource. It has already been an immensely useful exercise for our experts on site and in the future it will be used for civil engineering students and school visits to demonstrate how everything works behind the scenes, or indeed, under the ground!
