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Looking back on the years activities for 2014, I am pleased to report that GDG had a hugely positive 12 months, exceeding all targets and setting an excellent platform for future project successes in 2015. Revenues have continued to grow throughout 2014 through a combination of international projects and increasing work in the Irish market. The GDG team has also expanded considerably with staff numbers growing to match the demand for services. Several of the new recruits are introduced in the articles below and will be an integral part of our project delivery going forward. The general economic improvement in Ireland has led to significant growth in infrastructure engineering, where GDG have been particularly active,
delivering a diverse range of projects including flood defence designs and railway risk management projects. The outlook for 2015 is also looking bright with upcoming projects increasing across all sectors. As the Irish economic situation further improves, GDG are well placed to service the construction sector with both permanent and temporary works designs. This edition covers recent project news including the recently completed landslide study for the Geological Survey of Ireland and an ongoing test campaign for a tidal turbine developer. Other office news includes GDGs qualification on the Achilles and FPAL supplier databases.
Newsletter Issue 3 | Winter 2014/2015
Paul Doherty, Managing Director
Providing efficient and reliable geotechnical solutions for the most challenging projects
Welcome to the third edition of GDG Newsletter, January 2015
In this Issue: RAMPION WIND FARM| BIM MODELLING| OUTLOOK FOR 2015
CONTENTS:
Outlook for 2015 Recently Completed
Projects
- Rampion Offshore Wind Farm
- Pile Drivability for Shell Facility
- GSI Landslide Risk Mapping
New and Ongoing Projects
- Bray Flood Defence Design
- LEANWIND
- Open Hydro Foundation Design
- RWE Lateral Loaded Vibro Piles
B.I.M Services
General News
- New Staff Appointments
- Job Opportunities
- FPAL & ACHILLES CERTIFIED
Project #1: Rampion Offshore Wind Farm
Project #2: Pile Driveability Analysis
GEOTECHNICAL SOLUTIONS FOR THE OIL & GAS INDUSTRY GDG were commissioned by Shell to undertake a pile driveability analysis for a Well Conductor located in the Dutch sector of the North Sea. The technical scope of work for this project involved reviewing existing site investigation reports, developing a representative geotechnical profile and undertaking pile driveability analysis for a number of pile geometries and installation options. The well was located on the boundary of an in-filled glacial valley at a water depth of
approximately 45m. Due to the uncertainty of the glacial valley lateral extents and the lack of geotechnical information from within the valley deposits, quantifying the geotechnical parameters at the Well location was quite challenging. The pile geometry considered in this study included both a 30” and a 36” diameter conductor pile, to be installed to a target depth of 80m below the seabed. The pile driveability was modelled using a one-dimensional wave equation approach and the SRD profiles were calculated using our own in-house design methods. The SRD models allowed for drilling induced soil stress relief and friction fatigue during driving.
GDG Newsletter Winter 2014/2015
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Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions Ltd. (GDG), in close collaboration with LiC Energy, have recently completed the geotechnical interpretation for the Rampion project. The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm site is located off the south coast of England and is being developed by E.ON Climate and Renewables. The wind farm will consist of over 100 turbines and has the potential to deliver 700MW of electricity when completed. We were commissioned to undertake the detailed geotechnical interpretation for the turbine monopile locations and assist LicEnergy in both site verification and monopile design optimisation. As such, GDG determined the various soil strata and deposits through extensive analysis of the data provided by several soil investigation campaigns, established the geotechnical design parameters based on the available
information and identified the potential geotechnical design issues at the proposed foundation locations accordingly. This was both an exciting and challenging project, enabling GDG to implement their expertise in geotechnical and statistical analysis, soil parameter interpretation and offshore foundation design. The completion of the geotechnical interpretation marked an important milestone for the entire project.
Project #3: GSI Landslide Risk Mapping
In early December, GDG attended the close out meeting of the landslide risk mapping project, where GDG had been commissioned by the Geological Survey of Ireland to undertake a landslide inventory of four discrete locations. Each site covered an extensive region and varied terrain in Donegal, Galway, Tipperary and Meath. The project involved studying aerial imagery and
identifying landslide features, which were subsequently confirmed through field observations. The landslide characteristics were then recorded on a GIS platform for future integration into a predictive risk model.
GDG Newsletter Winter 2014/2015
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New Project: River Dargle Flood Defences In October of 2014, GDG won two detailed engineering work packages for the River Dargle Flood Defence Scheme in Bray. The two projects comprise the area between Bray Bridge and the Harbour Bridge on both sides of the river, covering the defences at Ravenswell Road and Seapoint Court housing estate. The scope of works involve a number of design elements such as sheet pile walls, reinforced concrete retaining walls, and flood embankments. The detailed engineering being undertaken by GDG involves the diversion of utilities and interface details with the existing structures on site. Furthermore, GDG have the role of PSDP and as such have responsibility for undertaking preliminary health and safety
plans and ensuring all works are designed in such a fashion as to minimise the risk to workers and the general public. The analysis and design is complicated by the tidal nature of this stretch of river. At present most of the design work is complete. This aspect of the scheme is about to advance to construction stage.
New Service: B.I.M. Building Information Modelling
RWE VIBRO PROJECT
GDG have successfully completed Stage 1 of the mechanical testing for a tidal turbine project, exploring the interaction of the structure’s vertical self-weight and the horizontal environmental loading in order to optimise the turbine design. Stage 1 included site selection, geotechnical investigations, ground interpretation, foundation design and installation, foundation testing methodology and data analysis.
The Vibro project is the largest scale onshore lateral load test campaign ever conducted. GDG are providing advice on the test programme and reviewing technical reports and deliverables.
GDG Newsletter Winter 2014/2015
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B.I.M. rendering of Letterkenny Court House
The design and engineering team at GDG have recently extended our service offering to include Building Information Modelling (B.I.M.). With an extensive background in producing detailed 3D Finite Element Models, B.I.M. is another tool in our detailed design capabilities. We look forward to bringing this expertise to a diverse range of projects in the weeks and months ahead. GDG have already applied our skills to REVIT modelling of courthouse projects in Letterkenny and Drogheda for a BAM P.PP tender.
Tidal Turbine Foundations
LEANWIND NEWS
Certification & Memberships
Achilles is a procurement portal and prequalification database to allow suppliers to identify the most highly qualified companies in the supply chain. GDG were recently fully approved on the Achilles supply line database, which means we meet the high quality standards and financial stability required by large buyers (i.e. utilities). Furthermore, GDG independently prequalified for the FPAL database which identifies suitable suppliers for the Oil, Gas and Energy Sector.
GDG Newsletter Summer 2014
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GDG to present on LEANWIND at EWEA Offshore 2015 The LEANWIND project, which started in December 2013, is an EU-funded applied research project with the main objective of reducing the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) from offshore wind. This will be achieved by facilitating the industrial application of innovative concepts with cost-saving potential across the whole supply chain. The first three deliverables of the LEANWIND project, providing insight to the state of practice and anticipated developments in the offshore wind supply chain, were issued in 2014 and are now publicly available through www.leanwind.eu. The second Annual General Assembly of the project was held from 19th to 21st November 2014 in the University of Hull, UK. The meeting was very well attended with representatives participating from all 31 academic and industrial partners of the LEANWIND project across Europe. The main
focus of the meeting was to discuss the progress made during 2014 as well as setting directions for the upcoming activities and identifying the technical interfaces between the 10 Work-Packages involved, with the aim of devising optimised integration strategies. In particular, GDG are leading a systematic investigation of novel foundation concepts and evaluating their efficiency and limits in response to challenging industry requirements that are expected in the near future. Work is currently progressing on optimising the three most common foundation types employed for offshore wind: XL monopiles, jacket structures and gravity based foundations. GDG and ACCIONA Infrastructures will present some preliminary findings from LEANWIND during the EWEA OFFSHORE 2015 event in Copenhagen later this year. This paper will address the global performance of various existing concepts of gravity based foundations in terms of buoyancy and stability.
Student internship
OFFICE NEWS
Recruitment GDG are currently seeking engineers interested in working in a dynamic range of geotechnical and civil projects. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. In particular we are looking for an experienced Principal Engineer.
GDG are currently hosting students from the University of Castilla–La Mancha Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais. Students have completed industrial placements in our Dublin Office as part of their bachelors thesis. We hope to continue this French-Irish collaboration well into the future!
Unit 1B, Parkview House, Beech Hill Office Campus, Clonskeagh, Dublin 4, Ireland
www.gdgeo.com Email: [email protected]
GDG Newsletter Winter 2014/2015
New Staff Members Over the past few months the GDG team has expanded. We now employ 14 people with a wide range of engineering backgrounds and project experience. The one thing that they all have in common is technical excellence!
Sophie O’Connor joined the GDG team in November 2014 as a Senior Geologist, where she brings a wealth of experience. Sophie graduated from UCD with a B.Sc (Hons) degree in 1999 where she specialised in Geology and completed a PhD on the electrical resistivity of Irish soils to devise a method for measuring in-situ resistivity. Sophie has extensive experience in geotechnical, hydrogeological and geophysical projects in the public and private sectors. These include groundwater protections plans, road and water infrastructure, housing and hotel developments, wind farms and flood embankments.
Carl Brangan took on the role of Senior Geotechnical Engineer in September 2014 where he adds over 15 years of experience to the technical team. Carl graduated from UCD with a BE (Hons) degree in 1998, specialising in geotechnical engineering and soil mechanics. He has worked on a range of consultancy projects including the Corrib gas pipeline, offshore foundations, numerical modelling, slope stability assessments, and material issues surrounding pyrite constructions (forensic engineering). Carl has considerable experience in detailed design works including advanced numerical modelling of complex soil-structure projects such as a variety of basement constructions.
Colm Nolan is the latest recruit to the Dublin office, where he started in January, filling the much needed role of Engineering Technician. Colm comes to GDG with over 10 years experience working as a CAD technician for a range of civil, structural and electrical projects.
