Because of slide activity this summer, a climbing lane on
Highway 2 south of the Dunvegan Bridge near Fairview, Alta.,
required construction of a retaining wall in addition to a
minor realignment of the road and paving.
“It’s the nature of the land and the geology of 10,000-yearold
glacial deposits,” said Dirks. The provincial government
did a lot of infrastructure work in the 1950s and ‘60s there,
he says; however, the work performed was “bulldozer quick”
with the aim of getting people on the road as fast as possible.
“Since then, construction has been catch-up and fixing
what was done,” said Dirks. “We’ll start digging or drilling a
pile, and five metres down we’ll find a big gloryhole of trees
and topsoil that someone just buried underneath the road.
That’s why it’s sliding away.”
The work requires an extensive and impressive line of
equipment.
“We started with one small-wheeled Texoma 700 rig and
increased our piling fleet to over 40 pieces of equipment,” said
Dirks, including Soilmec drill and anchor rigs, a Bauer BG 24,
a Comacchio MC-22 and numerous grout plants, cranes, tool
handlers, skid steers and tooling.
“They give us the range to do any size caisson, anchor, soil
nail and shoring design. Some of our drill rigs and anchor rigs
are GPS-controlled and fully automated,” he said, noting that
The Edmonton Mechanized River Valley Experience project
for the City of Edmonton and Graham Construction
the company uses computerized estimating, 3-D modelling,
data collection and layout programs, as well. “You download the
drawings directly into the machine, they go out onto a site that
has no survey on it whatsoever and the machine knows which
piles go where and stops digging at a certain depth.”
Servicing clients
This diversification has allowed Kichton Contracting to be of
better service to its clients.
COVER STORY
Installing geotechnical instrumentation to monitor a new tangent
wall constructed near Peace River for Alberta Transportation
Installing large cages for a tangent wall north of Peace
River for Alberta Transportation on the Diashowa Hill
24 Q3 2017 www.pilingcanada.ca
/www.pilingcanada.ca
/www.pilingcanada.ca
/www.pilingcanada.ca
