Cold Drawn Products

Our brief

Lithos were initially commissioned by the existing landowner to provide a geoenvironmental appraisal of the site assuming a residential end use.

Site history and characteristics

The site is located approximately 7.5km south of Bradford city centre and occupies an area of 1.8 hectares.   It has a long industrial history being occupied as early as 1854 by a wire works, hair mill and farm. During the late 1960s an extensive opencast coal mine was created and backfilled around the south and west of the site.  Most recently the site has been a steel rod and wire manufacturing facility.  Made ground underlies the majority of the site and generally comprises demolition material from previous phases of building.

What we did and outcomes

Lithos’ investigation included a review of a previous reports, determination of the site's environmental setting and a ground investigation comprising 18 trial pits and 5 rotary openhole probeholes.  The ground investigation was carried out both inside and outside the buildings whilst decommissioning was being undertaken which required close liaison.

The Lousey Coall seam underlies the site at shallow depth and has been extracted by opencast methods in the past.  A mining investigation was undertaken using rotary drilling techniques.  No shallow workings were identified but the boreholes did locate the deep opencast around the boundaries of the site - hazardous gas monitoring wells were installed so a gas risk assessment could be done at a later date.

Given the long industrial history and more recent industrial operations on site, contamination was anticipated and a detailed contamination assessment was undertaken.  This assessment identified heavy metal, hydrocarbon and asbestos contamination within the soils.  Risk assessment was undertaken and a detailed remediation strategy was developed to render the site suitable for its proposed end-use.  Lithos have worked closely with the Client's preferred remediation Contractor to further develop this strategy into detailed and costed remediation proposals; this has enabled the landowner to calculate a more realistic current value for the site.