H.E. Services assists with flood defences
08/11/2004

H.E. Services, the multi-national plant hire company specialising in excavator hire has been assisting The Environment Agency in a flood defence project in Rye, East Sussex.

The project, at Monk Bretton Bridge is being undertaken by the Environment Agency’s Emergency Workforce and specialist sub-contractor Cain Bio-Engineering to address a problem of erosion of a flood defence embankment along the tidal section of the River Rother downstream of the bridge abutment. The works include the re-profiling of the existing riverbank and the construction of a brushwood mattress over a length of approximately 120 metres. The Cain designed brushwood mattress will act as a sediment trap and will allow the embankment to reform to a stable profile.

The brushwood mattress comprises around 2,500 hardwood posts interwoven with hazel faggots. The posts are between 3m and 6m in length and are pushed into the tidal mud at 0.75m centres to a depth typically of 2m.

H.E. Services supplied a Komatsu 22m Long Reach PC340 LC excavator which, with its extra long reach arm, enabled the remedial work to be undertaken from dry land, thus avoiding the hazards associated with personnel working in a tidal zone.

In addition to the supply of the Komatsu machine, technical staff at H.E. Services manufactured a dedicated post clamp attachment to handle and position the hardwood posts. Comments Mrs Pam Durey, Director of H.E. Services; “This was a challenging project which enabled us to demonstrate our capability to solve clients’ problems and differentiate ourselves from other plant hire organisations. The Komatsu machine selected was more than capable of fulfilling the excavation task that was set, the problem we had to solve was how to adapt the 22-metre boom to suit the positioning of the hardwood timbers. Our considerable experience in developing the Masterhitch enabled us to engineer a solution that met the Environment Agency’s needs.”

A spokesman for the Environment Agency reports that because of the success of the H.E. Services solution, the anticipated construction period has been reduced by 3 weeks, resulting in a saving of over £10,000.

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