CLIENT
Catholic Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust
LOCATION
Varroville, NSW
YEAR COMPLETED

Ongoing

OUR INVOLVEMENT
  • Geotechnical slope stability inspection
  • Geotechnical assessment of 10 existing dams and geotechnical investigations, including:
    • Drilling augered and cored boreholes
    • Excavating test pits
    • Excavating deep trenches into a landslide using a 30-tonne excavator installation of 400mm-diameter groundwater monitoring wells
    • Soil testing
    • Hydrogeological assessment
    • Geotechnical design

Project challenges

The cemetery’s proposed 7km of new roads extend across variable terrain and the bottom of a very large landslide. The six buildings and replacement dams will be constructed over highly variable foundation materials, including high engineered fill platforms, variable slopewash soils, soft alluvial soils and/or residual clays and weathered siltstone bedrock.

Our solutions

JK Geotechnics completed comprehensive geotechnical investigations for the proposed road network, buildings and replacement dams. The iterative and collaborative design process between JK Geotechnics and the client, civil engineer, structural engineer, architect, ecologist and heritage consultant enabled us to significantly modify the road design in the vicinity of the landslide so that no excavation of the landslide bottom was needed. We also significantly modified the design of a nearby building to account for the slopewash foundation material. The earthfill for the proposed replacement dams was repurposed waste materials from the site works. JK Geotechnics also designed the dams, including the foundation and earthfill specifications, and chimney drain filter.

JK Environments completed a contamination assessment and remediation planning.