National Highways Modular Building in Heston: 140 Screw Piles to 10 m

In Heston, UKHelix installed 140 Finnish-made helical piles for a new modular building, a base for National Highways traffic officers. The piles were an 89R triple-helix design, taken down anywhere from 4 to 10 metres to reach firm ground.

Modular buildings live or die on precision: the units are made off site, so the foundations have to match them exactly. UKHelix held the final levels across the pile caps to between 0 and 2 millimetres, with custom pile caps made to suit the building. Every pile was monitored twice on the new Datum torque hub, with live data confirming each one as it went down.

Even with the depth and precision involved, the work moved quickly: all 140 piles went in over three days. The modular units could then be set straight onto a set of screw pile foundations built to the tolerance the building needed.