Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Projects

Silkstone have successfully undertaken many Geo-Environmental Investigations on former factory sites ('brownfield' sites) for housing, on behalf of several well known housing developers, in order to provide remediation and design information and comply with the requirements of statutory bodies.

Silkstone were commissioned by a site owner in Halifax to assess the risk to his property from flooding, as his property had never flooded in living memory but because of his postcode he suddenly found his property was 'at risk'. Silkstone surveyed the site and reported on the setting, conducted a technical dialogue with the local planners and the Environment Agency, and the site was reclassified as low risk.

A major industrial site had been recently redeveloped but no records had been kept of the former site when it was demolished. Structures had included potentially dangerous or contaminative elements such as mine shafts, adits, a coking plant, a gas plant, a foundry, and others. Silkstone conducted a desk study of available information and produced a report summarizing the previous site layout and likely risks, subsequently used for planning future site use and the Pollution Prevention Control (PPC) application for the site.

A small industrial park owner wished to extend his site into an area formerly used as a coal mine spoil heap. Silkstone carried out an investigation to determine the risks too human health and the environment posed by the tip, including gas and laboratory sample testing, and inspected the tip material for its potential use as a construction material.