Flow survey for Housing Development site

Introduction

As part of the redevelopment of the former Royal Ordnance Factory site at Bishopton near Glasgow, a national client approached Detectronic to design and deliver a bespoke flow survey.

Home to one of the UK’s largest brownfield regeneration projects, the client is transforming the 2,400 acre site into a new, multi-million pound development – Dargavel Village. Named after Dargavel House, a 16^th century, Category B listed ‘Tower House’ located with the grounds of the complex, Dargavel Village will eventually be home to a thriving development of housing, commercial & community buildings, a community woodland park and recreational facilities.

Objective

• Monitor the effect of rainfall across the entire site with a focus on managing its overall ecology and protecting water quality

Flow Survey Planning & implementation

“As part of their remediation of the site and with three different housing contractors planning and building hundreds of properties on the site, it was imperative that client’s property management team understood the hydrology of the area,” explains Phill Tuxford, technical support manager with Detectronic.

“In order to do that they needed a robust set of data to inform the planning and construction process.”

Continues Phill: “After visiting the site and talking with the property management team, we implemented a four-month flow survey project and installed one rain gauge and five of our MSFM flow meters at strategic points across the development area.

“During the four-months the rain gauge and monitors were in place, our data centre teams collated and analysed data on a daily basis, submitted weekly reports to the property management team and directly reported any issues that arose. There were only two notable issues – a rise in depth and reduction in velocity on two separate occasions – both of which were attributed to a failure at the local pumping station.”

Results

A spokesman for the national client said: “All of the data gathered from the flow survey was shared with the respective water and sewage company (WaSC) and, as a result of the success of the project and the value of the information, we chose to purchase all of the equipment installed by Detectronic to use for long-term monitoring of the site.”