Highways and drainage consultancy for Matford Park Farm residential development
- Client Name
- Cavanna Homes
- Location
- UK
Challenge
SLR was appointed by Cavanna Homes to provide highways and drainage consultancy services for a 245-no. residential development including associated public open space and landscaping, major off-site Section 278 improvements to the A379 and a new signalised junction to serve as the main access to the site.
Solution
The appointment included detailed masterplanning & planning application support. This was followed by detailed engineering drawings and construction specification for all on-site and off-site adoptable works, including the signalised access, A379 widening, private roads and driveways, adoptable surface water and foul water drainage networks including SuDS drainage modelling, private drainage with private attenuation systems and external levels with retaining walls, tanking and underbuilds.
The design process involved detailed cut & fill analysis for the site where the steep gradients of the site, together with proposed cascaded ponds, and phasing had to be carefully managed during the design process. The new site access (Section 278) was designed in a way to provide future admission to adjacent, future development sites and formed part of Devon’s successful Housing Infrastructure Funding (HIF) bid. The introduction of HIF required SLR to work with a variety of stakeholders, some entering at various stages of the design process, to review and develop the off-site scheme to benefit all parties.
Impact
Our team of engineers based in our Bristol and Manchester offices were advising the client on this challenging site and how to implement the project with limited groundworks to make sure that no export/import of material would be required. Numerous layout changes took place not only to optimise the design and achieve financial efficiencies, but to follow changing requirements from a sales perspective working with different standards for various types of units.
The project consisted of a number of separate planning applications and the design had to be undertaken in a way that allows individual areas to be worked on independently, and not reliant on the whole site being developed at the same time.
The new site access also had to provide a route to adjacent, future development sites and formed part of Devon’s successful Housing Infrastructure Funding (HIF) bid. We worked with key stakeholders to review and develop the off-site scheme for the benefit of all parties.
SLR has been also supporting Cavanna Homes in number of NMAs. Replanning and site construction support including temporary drainage, advising on ground water issues and dealing with number of construction changes. Consequently, SLR has been also appointed to prepare the design for Matford extension of additional 37 units.
