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Design of a tower crane foundation and temporary rail embankment support on a project at Murieston Crescent Edinburgh.
Temporary works were required to support the railway embankment during the construction of a new retaining wall along with a complicated tower crane foundations which interfaced with both the piled retaining wall and permanent works foundations.
Principal Contractor – Bowmer & Kirkland
This development consisted of new student accommodation within the west end of the city centre.
The site was adjacent to the railway and had a significant height differential from the north to the south of the site between the Western Approach Road and Murieston Crescent.
Embankment Support
The proposed structure consisted of a reinforced concrete retaining wall adjacent to the existing Network Rail embankment, which was to replace an existing masonry wall.
Andun became involved when the initial design of a cantilevered sheet pile became unfeasible due to obstruction and excessive deflections.
The solution was to design a propped sheet pile wall, that reduced the required embedment and deflections and utilised the new permanent pile caps to prop from. This reduced the need for casting additional kentledge, reducing both the cost and environmental impact of the project.
A phased installation sequence was also completed to show the methodology of constructing the new permanent retaining wall while providing suitable support to the railway embankment.
AEC were responsible for completing the F002/F003 for Network Rail approval and acted as CRE for the design elements.
Tower Crane Foundation Design
The tower crane foundation required interfaced with the contig pile on the site boundary along with future drainage runs and the permanent works foundations on the remaining sides.
This constrained the design and involved us incorporating the tower crane foundation into a proposed ground beam and analysing the combined load case of permanent and temporary loads to provide an efficient solution.
This also involved us designing temporary propping for the contiguous pile wall as the tower crane foundations were installed deeper than was expected when the contiguous pile were designed and installed.
The proposed design provided the most effective solution to install the base within the tight site constraints.