Land & Water Services were employed by British Waterways to install a Nicospan revetment system along approximately 1,000 meters of canal bank on both the South and North Stratford-on-Avon Canal.

The offside banks had been heavily eroded due to extensive boat ‘wash’ affecting the soft soils prevalent in this area, and by farm animals accessing the water from the banks. The system employed also negated the need for dredgings to be removed from site saving lorry movements and disposal costs.

The Nicospan and Verdatex geotextile systems were installed using sustainably sourced, 6ft and 8ft machine rounded posts. Land and Water’s own narrow beam pontoon with a 5t mounted excavator and hammer attachment was used to drive the posts.

Silts were then dredged from the canal to further open the navigable channel and placed behind the Nicospan. Coir rolls were then installed to the bank to provide a key to the new bank line.

Land & Water Services were commissioned by Birse Construction to carry out the piling and revetments works at Swinefleet as part of the priority schemes within a phased package of works to sustain key tidal defences in the Humber Estuary.

The works consisted of the installation of 1061m of 13m long AZ28 toe piles driven using a pontoon based crane along with 627m of PU18 crest piles, to raise the level of the flood defences, which were installed using a combination of a “Movax” vibratory hammer and “Giken” silent piling systems.

In addition the revetment area above the toe piles was re-profiled and stabilised with a 600mm thickness of armour stone (total 13,000t of rock). Other works included the top piles being clad and capped with FSC oak timber and the replacement of sluice gates on an existing outfall structure.

All access to the works had to be from the River Ouse within the inter-tidal area and therefore was subject to cycle tidal inundation. A temporary jetty and mooring location needed to be established adjacent to the works area with all materials being loaded out onto barges using a 150t crane.

The River Lambourn had become devoid of many of the natural characteristics found within chalk stream rivers. Throughout the last 100 years the river has become twice the width of what it had been leading to reduced flow conditions. The slower flow allowed silt deposits to smother the natural river bed gravels upon which the fish, invertebrates and vegetation were all dependant upon. The tree canopy to the river banks had become dense over sustained periods and many areas of the river corridor lacked natural light.

Specialist consultants and project engineers worked closely with Land & Water Services to deliver the restoration project. The works covered some 2 km of river which is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest. Large areas of tree canopy were reduced via the selected felling of the tree limbs in order to reintroduce natural light to the corridor. All felled timber was retained upon site for reuse within the project. New revetments were installed from the bank with retained material from the tree felling being utilised to face and infill the revetments. Large tree limbs were installed at upstream angles to the bed of the river to act as flow restrictors.  These tree limbs along with the revetments narrow the river and deviate the water flows resulting in water accelerating  around the installations (conditions favoured by fish species).

Over 6,000 tons of gravel was placed into the river in order to raise the bed height, again accelerating river flows but equally providing spawning areas for fish & other aquatic species.

Works were undertaken within urban areas proving highly restrictive for access. Land & Water acted as principal contractor under full CDM regulations.

Discharging into the Severn Estuary the River Wye has a 13m tidal range and at Chepstow is throttled between town and cliffs.  The rock watershed means that as rainfall quickly runs off the land a dangerous river becomes lethal. When the Environment Agency in Wales found that the upper section of the river bank was collapsing beneath a pontoon and link-span bridge, with no access from the land, they turned to Land & Water for a solution. The riverbank could only be reached for a short while over the highest tides and during limited daylight windows.  A low headroom road bridge just downstream meant that movement on the river could only be during low tides.

Land & Water used a 13 tonne long reach excavator with an extension hoe on their modular pontoon system with powerful, shallow draft tugs and hopper barges.

Land & Waters method was to flat away the link span bridge and pontoon before completing the re-grading and placement of protection over the last suitable tide of the season.