Client: Dartford Council

Contract Administrator: Ingleton Wood

Duration: 26 weeks

Principal Designer: RSK

Location: Dartford DA9

Value: £3.1m

Clifford Devlin were appointed contractor to manage the essential maintenance works at London Road Cliff on behalf of Dartford Borough Council.

The works include clearing unnecessary, and potentially destabilising, vegetation, cliff stabilisation and netting works.

The project was planned to reduce work at height where ever possible. Clifford Devlin adopted a scheme where we could complete the majority of the work by using a long reach excavator from the top of the cliff to drill the anchor system.

This negated some of the rope access work using a suspended drilling rig. The works also included removing the high railing on London Road and replacing with temporary edge protection.

An ecologist supervised the works ensuring that Clifford Devlin were doing everything to avoid disturbing any wildlife.

Significant environmental controls were implemented, and training provided by Ecologists on the wildlife in the area. A ‘stop work’ and hand over procedure is also in place between Clifford Devlin and the Ecologists.

Clifford Devlin used a mobile chipper within the compound of site to assist with chipping the vegetation to enable us to re-use and create new habitats for the wildlife.

To allow for this enabling works on the cliff to be carried out in a safe environment, thereby not putting members of the public or the site team at risk, a traffic management system was installed on London Road.

We closed the footpath and part of the road so that we could create a compound to use the bigger machines on the top of the cliff and house our state-of-the-art modern welfare which utilised solar power. We also laid road plates down for protection of road surface and underground utilities and their chambers.

We installed a traffic light controlled pedestrian crossing to direct members of the public away from the work area.

On completion of the project, reinstatement of the public areas around the bottom of the cliff and a re-planting scheme was installed to enhance provision of the natural wildlife habitats.