The exploratory works for Scotland’s Coire Glas pumped hydro project will be the focus of the BTS’s September lecture.
The Coire Glas project, located on the shores of Loch Lochy, between Fort William and Inverness in the Scottish Highland, will be the UK’s first large-scale pumped storage scheme to be developed in 40 years.
At its inception, the Coire Glas exploratory works was a short, but by no means unambitious, project to undertake detailed ground investigation in an area where normal methods would not work. Owing to the vast underground structures planned for the wider Coire Glas Pumped Storage scheme, and the mountainous terrain above, a bold package of GI was put together to de-risk the future works. This included significant surface drilling, in difficult to access locations and the construction of a 900m exploratory adit, deep under the mountain.
The lecture will outline the construction of the exploratory adit, which proved to be very much as its namesake: exploration. The works encountered a large fault zone at over 700m in, and an extension to the tunnel length was required for a broader scope of exploratory drilling and in situ geological testing.
The exploratory adit was completed in August last year.
The speakers will be Strabag tunnel agent Joe Coxson; Strabag engineering and technical manager Tom Robinson who led the procurement, planning and onsite management of the exploratory works GI phase; SSE Renewables engineering geologist Sean Murchie; and Stantec senior engineering geologist Tom Taplin.
The event will be held on September 18 at 18:00(GMT+1) at the Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, Westminster, London SW1P 3AA. It will also be streamed live.
