April 2010: Edinburgh to Glasgow Investment Programme: Pilot Piling

25kV OLE Electrification will play a major part of the Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP) with up to 350 single track kilometres being electrified. The goal of the Pilot Piling Programme (PPP) is to produce a report which will provide detailed information on both ground conditions and methods of piling in advance of outline and detailed OLE design works for future OLE structures for EGIP as a whole.

To achieve this goal, the PPP has two interlinked objectives. Firstly, the PPP is to undertake an investigation to confirm ground conditions at various locations on the core E&G corridor and also diversionary routes.

Secondly, a comparative study of different pilling methodologies will be employed. This will establish rates of piling installation and, in the wider context, productivity based on ground conditions, piling methods, possession times and distance between pile locations.

It is a combination of the two objectives listed above that will provide the basis for the recommendations of the final report.

To ensure these objectives are met, 95 test piles have been identified for installation at various locations where changes in geology have been identified. This will mitigate against additional costs for conventional ground investigation and will enable the test piles to be incorporated in the permanent works.

The 95 test piles will be installed by the Network Rail MPV Piling Train and piling enabled Road Rail Vehicles. Each method will install approximately half of the 95 test piles, which are divided by location on five routes; CBD1, CBD2, EGM1, SCM1 and GHE.

In addition to distributing the trial pile locations by route, five different installation methodologies utilising the MPV train and Road Rail Vehicles have been selected. The decision to employ different options was taken to ensure the widest range of productivity rates will be captured, while maintaining sample ranges of sufficient size for meaningful comparison.

The productivity rates of the five methodologies will be captured through the use of the monitoring documents produced by Aspin Foundations. These documents record all aspects of the piling process. The documents include sections for logging the time taken for the MPV/RRV to set up into position, drive the pile and return MPV/RRV to a state where it is ready to move to the next pile.

It is anticipated that the output of this analysis will produce a clear indication of which piling method is superior under what set of conditions.

The final output required by Network Rail for the Pilot Piling Programme is a qualitative report based on the quantitative data achieved during the programme. The findings of the final report will be used to influence future decisions taken for the wider EGIP Electrification Programme.

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