Coppice Farm, Ripley

Infrastructure Gateway over the last five years has branched into full Multi-Utility Infrastructure in order to offer a streamlined approach that supplies the customer with excellent service from initial enquiry down to the final connection. A fine example of this is the scheme mentioned above which is currently on going – known locally as ‘Coppice Heights’ our client is building 400 new homes where IGL are providing the Water, Gas & Electric mains for the scheme.

Coppice Heights is situated 20 minutes’ drive north of Derby, in the town of Ripley. The development can be reached within a 10-minute drive of the A38. Coppice Heights falls under the Amber Valley Borough Council , which nicely leads on to the first challenge we faced on this scheme. The Gas point of connection was around 30m from site entrance and required IGL to dig & lay a new 250mm main to the existing Cadent 6” Cast Iron Main. The hard part being we had to cross over the Derwent Valley Severn Trent Water Aqueduct known locally as the ‘Amber Valley Aqueduct’. The DWA is one of STW’s most important assets, forming part of its strategic water grid it supplies more than 590,000 people with 200 million litres of treated water per day and it consists of 180km of large diameter pipeline. Before even contemplating acquiring Road Opening Licenses for Whiteley and Peasehill Road, we had to get in touch with our good contacts at the STW Asset Protection team and decide on the best course of action. After some lengthy discussions, and a full set of RAMS being drawn up and approved by STW we agreed the best way forward was to hand dig the section over the Aqueduct and for them to have a guide on site to advise us where required.

After obtaining the rest of asset plans for the route it turned out that the majority of the works had to be undertaken as hand dig! After completing the mains lay and testing, the 6” main was drilled into with no complications, and not only were the 30m of offsite made live but we also tied into the first 120m of on-site mains that had been laid a few weeks before.

The live Gas Main was soon accompanied by the first 120m of 180mm PE Water Main being made live on-site just a week later, as we held conversations/site meetings months before the site was due to start with our Client and our contacts at STW – managing to get them to agree to installation of the Source Of Water to Line & Level so, by the time we came to start laying mains on-site a few months later we had a live source just inside the site boundary ready to test our newly laid water mains.

With the 800kva Substation being situated in the centre of the site, we were required to wait for the roads to be constructed by the developer before we could reach it. The road was completed in 3 stages so, rather than laying and cutting the 2 x new 300AI (3c) CNE HV cables in several places, creating unnecessary weak points on the network – we managed to obtain agreement from WPD and GTC (our network adopter) to allow us to duct the cable all the way from the POC at the site entrance, all the way to the substation. When the plinth was formed, we delivered the Substation and gave the developer 4 weeks to complete the build in time for our Sub fit out, HV Cable Pull and WPD connection date. The cables were pulled in 2 sets of 170m pulls, leaving us 2 x LoveInk Straight joints to complete halfway between the POC and the Sub. The joints were completed, the cables passed their rigorous tests and WPD attended a few days later to undertake the jointing works to make the Sub live. A great effort by our client, cable pullers, HV Jointers and Project Manager Lewis Draper, for ensuring the connection went ahead as planned

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