Asia

Rock Slopes

Situated in Guizhou Province near Zunyi City, the site is located near the town of Sancha which supports a small rural community reliant on farming and local quarrying activity. An international cement producer and contractor were constructing a major new cement works which covered an area of 280ha – including a long haul road on steep ground connecting the limestone quarry to the cement works. Several slope collapses occurred blocking the haul road which had been substantially completed. The clastic topography, complex geology and haul road alignment around the steep hillside had to deal with steep adverse jointing in the weathered rock.

Settlement

A factory constructed at Changjiang Industrial Park, Gaoming County, Foshan, China was facing settlement issues: settlement at a range of 50-100mm was recorded. The factory comprises a 16,000m² single-storey production building, a 600m² 2-storey office building, a 500m² 4-storey dormitory building and a substation. The production area building is a single storey 5 bay industrial structure, 102.5m wide and 155m long. The main structure is piled whilst the floor slab is ground bearing.

Songyu Container Terminal

The Songyu Container Terminal is located within the Songyu Port Zone, approximately 25km from the main island city centre of Xiamen, China. The terminal was designed to reduce overloading at Xiamen's mainstry terminal in Dongdu, which was handling 75% of the city's container transportation. The 70ha site was assessed for earthquake risk, through ground treatment carried out using vibro-compaction with dynamic compaction along the shoreline. Imported sand and shelly fill was supplied for the site formation.

The A-Ma Temple Interchange is located south of Macau Maritime Museum and D. Carlos I Quay, directly opposite of Santiago Fortress. The development is a two-story interchange square with a three-story basement for a car-park occupying 1,137 metres square of land with an excavation depth of 23.7m.

A new resort was being developed in Cotai, adjacent to the Macau East Asian Games Dome. The development comprises a 20-storey hotel building with a 4 storey podium and 2-level basement. A diaphragm wall was installed along the site boundary to facilitate the deep basement construction. Sudden settlement occurred immediately outside of the site with local collapse during the diaphragm wall construction. Unexpected horizontal movement also occurred at the same location a year later during excavation.

Being one of anchor development of the Cotai Strip or 'Asia's Las Vegas', The Venetian Macau is located on a large area of flat reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane Island, the hotel-casino complex occupies over 10 million square feet of space. The method of sonic logging was used to measure the construction quality of the bored piles.

Arbitration

Expert advice was provided on an an arbitration in Malaysia.

The groundworks for the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort, Singapore was being studied. The feasibility and constraints related to dewatering for the scheme – to a depth of up to 20 metres – were examined. In view of the complexity of the ground and groundwater conditions at the site, there was significant geotechnical risk associated with the construction of the temporary and permanent works.

The Incheon International Airport Railroad links Incheon International Airport and Gimpo Airport to Seoul Station and Yongsan station. A partial collapse occurred at a corner of the main excavation for the station. The main excavation is of the order of 43m deep, while the station excavation is around 200m long and 50m wide.

Development of a luxury residential complex was proposed: the completed complex will comprise of a total of 20 villas and services buildings. The site has a footprint of about 1,400 square metres and is located south of Nuwara Eliya District in Sri Lanka, within a tea plantation in the highlands approximately 1,200m above Mean Sea Level.

Located in Mumbai, India, BMCT is a container terminal under its second phase of development. The BMCT phase 1 was constructed on reclaimed land with the phase 2 expansion to follow suit. The reclaimed land will undergo ground improvement procedures that involve multistage surcharging and PVD drainage. The expansion will allow BMCT to double its container capacity to 4.8TEU, and continue to be the largest container facility in the area.

Diyar Al Muharraq

Located within the Persian Gulf and the Kingdom of Bahrain, Diyar al Muharraq comprises of 7 reclamation islands. The stage 1 site formation consisted of approximately 600 Ha of land. The reclamation methods employed have largely involved the hydraulic placement of sand fills dredged from local borrow areas (within Bahraini waters). Site investigations included a marine survey, oceanography and ground investigation in the project and site survey areas, which encompassed an overall area of about 70 km² squared.