Work at Paddington Square continues for Sixense with the monitoring of various assets. The new development includes 350,000 square ft of workspace, 100,000ft square ft of shopping and dining including a rooftop bar and restaurant, plus a 1.35 acre public square and art walk,  all in London’s Paddington, being developed by Sellar on behalf of Great Western Developments Ltd.

 

Assets monitored include the Royal Mail Group and London Underground tunnels, parts of the Paddington Square site, Network Rail and London Underground stations (including escalators & lift shafts) as well as buildings and pavements surrounding the development.

 

The monitoring regime includes manual and automated 3D surveys as well as precise levelling, inclinometer surveys and the use of remote sensors (tiltmeters, tiltbeams & optical displacement sensors).

 

The experience of Sixense installation and survey staff across multiple environments and monitoring techniques is being combined with our Geoscope software platform to provide our client with access to all monitoring data on an easy to access platform.

 

Construction is due to be complete in spring 2022.

 

You can find out more about Paddington Square here.

Sixense is excited to embark on the significant challenge of providing noise, vibration and air quality management services on a section of Europe’s largest infrastructure project, HS2. This section of the mega engineering project, delivered by Align JV, includes the route’s flagship 3.4km-long Colne Valley Viaduct, as well as the 15.8km-long Chiltern twin-tunnels.

 

The services to be provided by Sixense include a significant amount of monitoring, modelling and assessment work across the 10+ worksites, which will play a key role in the wider efforts to minimise environmental impacts throughout the 5-year build.

 

Within the first six weeks of our involvement, we have already installed 22no. noise and air quality monitoring stations, which are largely powered by sustainable-energy sources.

 

You can find out more about our involvement with HS2 C1 in our references section, here.

The advantages of a multidisciplinary monitoring and engineering company are being realised by our client on the Thames Tideway East section in London.

 

Sixense is providing geotechnical, structural and noise & vibration monitoring solutions along with specialist acoustic consultancy services, covering the project and third party assets.

 

Traditional monitoring methods are supplemented with geophysical techniques, concrete pathology testing and even Satellite radar interferometry providing an ‘eye in the sky’.

 

The resulting data is made available to the engineering teams through our Geoscope platform, allowing effortless analysis and comparison of complex data from these multiple sources.

 

 

 

Sixense are always ready to assist companies undertaking developments adjacent to critical infrastructure such as Network Rail or TfL assets and in this case the monitoring works included British musical heritage – the Cart & Horses pub; birthplace of Iron Maiden.

 

Working for iBuild Building Solutions, Sixense designed a value engineered monitoring solution to meet the requirements of the ground impact assessment and Network Rail standards for monitoring the track, OLE and adjacent retaining wall.

 

A Cyclops automated total station, situated in the grounds of the Cart & Horses pub, prisms and wireless tilt sensors were used to provide continuous data to Sixense’s Geoscope web-based data environment and weekly reports for Network Rail, ensuring the safety of  the adjacent infrastructure during the development works.

The Rion-Antirion Bridge in Greece is an exceptionally impressive structure built to endure extreme environmental conditions. Seismic and meteorological risks to its structural integrity must be continually monitored. Its operating concession holder Gefyra has entrusted Sixense with this task for more than 16 years.

From the construction phase onwards, the operating concession holder has needed to monitor the response of the bridge structure to its environment, and validate the assumptions made at the design stage. The ongoing monitoring of the aging structure enables decisions regarding whether the bridge can be reopened or requires maintenance closures following periods of extremely high winds or seismic events.

 

The Rion-Antirion Bridge: a structure under the microscope 

EverSense ®, our Structural Health Monitoring System (SHM), was designed and implemented by our teams at the time of construction. Since it opened to traffic in 2004, the 1,000 data acquisition channels of this system have enabled GEFYRA to record and characterize the behaviour of the structure and to detect changes in this behaviour, especially after exceptional events such as earthquakes or unusually high winds.

The monitoring system has been regularly maintained and upgraded since implementation. It now incorporates functions that enable real-time traffic management during seismic events or exceptionally high winds.

The EverSense system has made it possible to validate structural design data and coupled with the quality of data generated, has made it possible to allow traffic back safely onto the bridge promptly over 16 years of major environmental events.

 

The real-time monitoring system implemented by Sixense meant that we could analyse the huge amount of data needed to establish an overview of the structure and receive automated alerts immediately after the earthquake struck. The great advantage of the Sixense system is that it allows us to achieve significant improvements in safety, which is the most important thing from our perspective

Aris Stathopoulos, Structural Maintenance Manager at Gefyra SA/ VINCI Concessions for the Rion-Antirion Bridge in Greece

As the construction phase of the Crossrail project nears completion, Simon Wright OBE, Crossrail’s Project Director, personally thanks Sixense for the quality of our service.

 

We’re pleased to share his acknowledgments. Of particular note is his reference to Contract C704, the “mega-contract” where Sixense were appointed at short notice to intervene and takeover the delivery, commissioning, maintenance and operation of the project-wide monitoring system installed by our competitor, under contract C701.

 

“I would like to personally thank Sixense and specifically the team which has, over several years supported the delivery of Crossrail. Sixense’s contribution through the main C704 contract, through earlier contracts within our supply chain, and through your continued support with the satellite interferometry has proved invaluable.

 

As we approach the opening of Crossrail, one of the unseen successes of the project has been our ability to deliver the underground spaces without any appreciable settlement impact to the infrastructure above. This has represented one of the greatest delivery risks and we are indebted to Sixense for your skills, experience and professionalism in supporting our project.”

 

Sixense is very proud of this success, delivered by our teams’ hard work and know-how.

 

The appreciation reflected in Mr. Wright’s letter validates our approach to client relationships and our pursuit of excellence and ongoing research in the fields of construction related risk management and specialist engineering.

 

It provides us with growing confidence in the success of our current projects and our commitment and contribution to successfully deliver tomorrow’s construction projects.

Spire London will be Western Europe’s tallest residential tower, standing just over 235 metres tall, with 67 floors, and will offer unrivalled views across London and the Southeast.

 

As part of this development, Sixense have been awarded the contract to carry out environmental and structural monitoring works related to the construction of the foundations.

 

The structural monitoring consists of 110 retro targets measured twice a week from approximately 10 different manual survey setups to monitor the movement of structures around the site including 2 listed buildings of West India Quay’s historic waterside: the Arch and the West India Gate. Manual inclinometers readings, which are also part of the overground monitoring package are expected to start in November 2017.

 

On the environmental side, Sixense are assisting Bachy Soletanche in obtaining their Section 61 consent prior to the commencement of their works, and implement an environmental monitoring scheme during the construction.

 

The construction noise and dust emissions are now controlled by noise and dust monitors. In addition, a geophone has been installed on site to protect a Thames Water asset, and within the adjacent Museum of London Docklands, two vibration monitors ensure that the large collection of historical artefacts, models and pictures are not disturbed during the demolition and piling operations.

 

All the structural and environmental data is presented in our new Geoscope web platform including the recent new features: noise dose calculation, static web page including information on the project and the monitoring status.

 

Part of the strategy associated with winning the above contract was the ability to get involved in monitoring two new Crossrail Tunnels that pass directly under the site. We are glad to announce that we have now secured this work and our first monitoring project on Crossrail assets begins soon!

 

A total of four CYCLOPS Automatic Stations located in the Eastbound and Westbound Crossrail tunnels will be installed next month, which will monitor 200 prisms positioned on 32 tunnel rings for the next 18 months.