The sandy ground conditions along the seafront at Bexhill-on-Sea may be ideal for holidaymakers - but not so ideal for major construction work. As a result Abbey Pynford, the specialist ground engineering solutions company, is spending a few weeks by the sea bringing its extensive piling experience to resolving a few issues for Cardy Construction. Cardy is constructing a new landmark development on this prime seafront location, consisting of 24 high specification two and three bed designer apartments, and the foundation work is challenging.

Housedeck, an innovative foundation system from ground engineering specialists Abbey Pynford, was in demand recently at a development near Kingston in Surrey, where three large houses are being built on a difficult plot that not only has a rising 45 degree slope from front to back, but at the highest point is surrounded by badger setts. Under the Protection of Badgers Act the setts must not be damaged at any time, or disturbed when a badger is in occupation.

With land becoming more and more scarce, difficult and challenging sites are inevitably on the increase. One recent example of a sensitive environment - involving the preservation of a number of mature trees - was on a 900 square metre plot at Woking, in Surrey. A residential development, by Windsor Homes, of five large detached houses in Pembroke Road, where tree roots were rampant across the site...

Whatever the government forecast adjustment for the number of new homes required by 2018 might be - and at the moment it is around four million - there is still going to a great deal of land area consumed. If, environmentally, green belt areas and prime sites are to be avoided wherever possible, this inevitably means building on increasingly difficult ground conditions.

One of the UK's leading specialist ground engineering solutions company's, Abbey Pynford, has been awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification. The purpose of this internationally recognised standard has always been to achieve management system effectiveness via process performance measures. The latest edition though makes this more visible, and continual process improvement and tracking customer satisfaction are made more explicit in this revision.

Complete slab design freedom, to virtually any shape, is easily achievable with the Housedeck and Comdeck systems from Abbey Pynford, one of the UK's leading specialist ground engineering solutions company's. These proprietary piled raft style foundation systems have been developed specifically to allow complete flexibility of size and shape - square, rectangular, curved, angled and even circular are all possible.

By their nature, works using traditional piled foundations are not usually considered overly eco-friendly, so it is refreshing to hear of an alternative cleaner, leaner approach from Abbey Pynford. The company is one of the UK's leading specialist ground engineering solutions company's and has developed proprietary piled raft style foundation systems known as Housedeck and Comdeck.

The government is forecasting that an additional 3.8 million new homes will be required by 2018. It has also been calculated that up to half of all sites involved in the UK have had some previous development and according to a Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) report, over 360,OOOha.of this has been contaminated. As if this weren't enough, many of the assigned growth areas are also susceptible to highly shrinkable clays.

When sixteen massive English Oak posts supporting the stunning Market House in Ledbury required refurbishment, ground engineering specialist Abbey Pynford were able to resolve the problem, cleverly using a series of jacks to lift the entire building by some 600mm - allowing the construction work to take place and then lowering the building back into its original position.

John Bartlett was determined to build a new holiday chalet next to the Thames at Bourne End in Buckinghamshire. The problem was that he knew the land would flood. The foundations were therefore a critical consideration and the various companies contacted insisted on using traditional methods. However, once specialist foundation and ground-engineering company, Abbey Pynford, got involved. Their innovative Housedeck system was evidently the answer.

Disposing of the excess soil generated when traditional foundations are dug out can be a real problem in certain parts of the country. Mike Dorman, Sales Manager at Abbey Pynford, looks at the solution his company has developed to overcome this particular problem – and many others as well.

Underpinning specialist Abbey Pynford has been called to the assistance of three separate seven-storey blocks of flats in London N1, maintained by the London Borough of Islington.

Abbey Pynford is currently installing Housedeck at a site in Kettering, where Midlands independent housebuilder Barry Howard Homes is building 98 apartments in seven three-storey blocks. Eighty per cent of the units have been pre-sold, with 58 of them going to Orbit Housing Association for key worker housing for the nearby hospital.

Abbey Pynford has just finished installing Housedeck at the King Alfred School in North London, where contractor Vascroft is constructing a new Craft & Design Technology building housing two new workshops together with computer studios at ground floor level. The land on which the extension is being built was never previously developed because of the difficulty of working around existing trees.