Ground Engineering Sustainability Award

Ramboll UK's Leeds office is celebrating Ground Engineering's acknowledgement of their work on the sustainable re-use of canal dredging sediments, with a Sustainability Award, presented at the magazine's 2009 awards dinner in February. Our environmental engineers, working for British Waterways and in close co-operation with environmental regulators, developed a testing strategy for the classification of sediments, saving around £150m in unnecessary disposal and new material costs.

Ramboll UK has received the 2009 Ground Engineering Sustainability Award for work completed as part of an ambitious programme to dredge British Waterways' canals in Long Sandall, South Yorkshire. Organised and judged by Ground Engineering magazine, the annual award scheme is a celebration of the very best in geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering.

Entrants for the sustainability award were asked to demonstrate innovative, unusual, interesting or cutting edge re-use of materials. Our team of environmental engineers, led by director Phil Studds and ably supported by Zoë Miller and Mark Bell, set out to establish the most sustainable re-use solution for dredged sediments.

The Yorkshire Business Unit of British Waterways was due to start dredging canals in the South Yorkshire region. Dredging is vital to the maintainance of navigable waters and helps ensure the long term passage of both freight and pleasure craft on the South Yorkshire Navigations. It is a key source of income for British Waterways. The canals in South Yorkshire had not been dredged for 10 years, which was beginning to impact the effectiveness of the system in the area.

The most economic means of managing the region's dredged sediments was to place the material under exemption into a dredging deposit located at Long Sandall. This site was nearing capacity and already contained 100,000 cubic metres of sediment previously dredged from the South Yorkshire canals. Therefore, we proposed that the material currently in the Long Sandall lagoons be excavated and reused as part of canal stabilisation works programmed for Whitley Lock, located 17 miles away.

The creation of vital void space and the certainty of use at the Long Sandall lagoon site is part of a medium to long term British Waterways project to develop a functional network of in-house disposal facilities. This is important to British Waterways given the cost, uncertainty, practical constraints and environmental issues linked to the use of commercial landfill.

In order to re-use the lagoon material under an exemption, it had to be established that the lagoon sediments could be classified as non-hazardous. Once this had been confirmed, the material required assessment in terms of its risk to human health and controlled waters in order to demonstrate its suitability for use in the canal bank stabilisation works. Ramboll UK carried out detailed assessment and modelling to help British Waterways demonstrate the suitability of the material for use as structural fill.

This work creates the infrastructure for British Waterways to manage dredged sediments in a sustainable manner, which is vital in ensuring the future viability of the waterways. It has saved British Waterways Yorkshire Business Unit potential disposal and material construction costs in the region of £1,500,000. In addition, using the waterway network to transport the 100,000 cubic metres of sediment eliminated the need for road transport, removing 10,000 lorry movements from local roads.

Commenting on the award win, Phil Studds, said "This project exemplifies the Ramboll philosophy of challenging current thinking to provide improved and sustainable engineering solutions. It is particularly satisfying to win such an award because this demonstrates that our innovative approach has been recognised by our peers."

To read Phil Studds' paper in full, click here ... Sustainable Material Reuse Solutions for Dredged Sediments ... 1.2Mb Word doc

Phil Studds, Director
phil.studds@ramboll.co.uk