Rye Harbour

Client:
Jackson Civil Engineering

Project Type:
Temporary Works

Crouch Waterfall designed temporary works for Jackson Civil Engineering (JCE) in the construction of a 1.3km long replacement sheet piled river training wall at Rye Harbour in East Sussex.  The sheet pile retaining wall retains beach material on the west bank of the River Rother and forms one side of a navigable allowing both pleasure and commercial craft to access Rye Harbour and Rye Wharf. The tidal nature of the area (at high tide the wall is completely submerged) has resulted in the formation of a nature reserve alongside the beach area restricting space for site activities.

The existing retaining wall was in poor condition and had suffered failures in places causing beach material to fall into the shipping channel. As part of an Environment Agency scheme JCE installed a new sheet piled retaining wall behind the existing. Crouch Waterfall designed a temporary working platform for the length of the site from which 120t crawler cranes and supporting 25t long reach excavators could safely work to drive piles.

In addition Crouch Waterfall designed a system of individual king piles and temporary support to retain the existing sheet piles once their anchor ties had been cut during installation of the new wall. As works progressed on site Crouch Waterfall provided a reactive service to JCE designing temporary retaining structures and assessing the influence of the site activity on the existing wall.