Roman Court, Exeter, Devon

This suite of multi storey offices was constructed predominantly in masonry, with precast floors. What made the job unusual was the proximity of some very old buildings around the perimeter of the site. Soils investigations revealed very undulating bedrock beneath a layer of weak materials of varying thickness. The foundation design was therefore based upon ground beams and piles, the pile scheme and ground beams being designed and detailed by myself, with the piles being specialist designed for given loads.

Strangely, during pile installation, it was found that many of the piles hit rock very near the surface, resulting in the use of some of the pile caps and ground beams as basic strip footings, much to everyone’s surprise.