Well autumn is upon us all and with it rain, lots of rain. Ground investigations are made a whole lot harder when the rain starts falling and the ground gets soft, sometimes too soft as you watch your 4x4 failing at being a 4x4.
I have worked through all sorts of weather, but one project that I will never forget was the winter of 2013-2014 when it really did not stop raining and it seemed like the whole of the south of England was under water. It was the winter where a section of the sea wall in Dawlish, Devon, collapsed and left the railway to Cornwall suspended in mid-air...remember that? I was the site supervisor on a project extending from Hastings on the south coast, into south London. I was working for Geotechnical Engineering Ltd at the time and the project involved many boreholes on railway embankments utilising the P60 slope climbing rigs, for Network Rail installing inclinometers to check for slope failures. Due to the nature of the project many locations where in the middle of nowhere and would involve up to a 3 mile walk through farmers fields in torrential rain and fields that now closely resembled a bog. It was hard exhausting work.
For months it seemed to go on for, you were never quite dry, always damp and a little wrinkly. You never got all the mud out of your skin, no matter how hard you scrubbed.
On one occasion we had completed drilling on one side of the embankment for the week and removed the rigs as the weather was to be particularly bad. Over that weekend as predicted the weather was biblical and the embankment we had just finished on collapsed, as this BBC news report shows.
That is obviously an extreme situation, but a regular wet Monday doesn't make the job any easier.
Trackway for access is a great solution and is being used more and more, but it is an expensive one and can make or break a tender. Hagglunds with support vehicles are often used on peat bogs and are also great on soft wet fields. Tracked dumpers and other tracked plant are essential during the autumn and winter months, even the summer ones on occasion!
Most of the time we have to all manage with a pair of waterproofs and hope they can keep the rain out just long enough so we don't get all wet and wrinkly.
Drilling is hard enough, but there cannot be anything worse than trial pitting in the rain, other than trial pitting in the wind and rain. Everything is wet, jars, labels, knees and toes. Everything slowly but surely becomes covered in mud, no matter how hard you try to keep it all clean, it is a losing battle. When soakaways start rising and ducks start appearing in your pit, sometimes you have to admit to defeat and come back another day. Just remember it will be summer soon and the rain will at least be warm.
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