Solutions > Digging & earthworks
Digging occurs in many types of works that require a firm foundation and that could suffer from compaction and/or landslip due to their weight or the stresses they bear. For underground networks, digging is necessary to receive pipe or line, sleeves and other installations.
Digging works vary considerably from one project to another, according to the worksite’s configuration, the type of installation and the nature of the terrain.
Sheeting is often essential during digging operations. Appropriate sheeting for the excavations is one of the key elements in SADE’s active safety policy.
SADE is able to implement many digging and sheeting techniques for its projects, while ensuring compliance with its ‘Clean Worksite’ charter.
By using machines, mechanised digging brings significant efficiency and greatly improves working conditions.
SADE has an enormous fleet of digging machines suitable for all environments, urban or non urban. All operators are trained and qualified to use them.
For digging operations, SADE innovates ‘responsibly’ by proposing suction digging or with trench excavator.
Using ’gentle’ technology and thanks to a fleet of suction excavators of various capacities, SADE operates quickly, discreetly and efficiently with optimum safety in the vicinity of existing networks.
This process applies to a wide variety of terrain and is suitable for many different types of intervention: network sounding, registration, cartography and inspection; digging trenches; cuts and rubble removal; cleaning and draining of outlets, manholes, pipes, pits, sand boxes; cleaning industrial sites; removing demolition rubble; tree root exposure, pollution control.
Suction digging helps to find a positive ecological balance.
When mechanised digging is not technically or statutorily possible (proximity of utility networks, for example), manual labour takes over. Manual digging is the ‘conventional’ method in this industry.
SADE personnel are well-trained in the requirements of this technique.
Dewatering is intended, either temporarily or permanently, to lower the level of a water table in order to allow civil engineering operations. Lowering the table maintains a safe, dry site and ensures good cohesiveness of the ground.
SADE provides a range of solutions suitable for these complex geotechnical operations and has the appropriate expertise in the three main drawdown technologies :
Whichever solution is employed, a tracking system monitors its effectiveness over time.
To ensure ground stability during excavating operations and thus avoid any landslide, SADE uses the technology of ground freezing by injecting liquid nitrogen.
Feasible in all water-bearing or damp soils, ground freezing by liquid nitrogen injection allows temporary soil consolidation and sealing for the installation of wells, tunnels or urban excavations.
This technology does not affect the natural hydrology and uses water that is present in the ground.
This process enables SADE to promote its expertise in the field of excavations, carrying out works that are safe and environmentally friendly.
Vertical kirving consists of constructing a ground installation then digging it out inside so that it is gradually lowered. This technique is particularly suited to unstable ground with water present and has the advantage of reducing the amount of excavated material produced and saving on backfill.
SADE has all the necessary expertise to carry out works using the Vertical kirving technique.
The practice of sheeting is one of the elements that are essential to safety in all our interventions. With regular training, SADE personnel have long experience and practical know-how in this subject.
An excavation of over 1.30 metres in depth must be systematically sheeted. The type of sheeting used depends on its depth: urban or extra deep (over 4 metres).
SADE has expertise in all appropriate techniques:
Materials recycling is an eco-responsible development that both meets landfill regulations and helps contribute to the demand for aggregates for worksites estimated in France to be nearly 400 million tons annually.
As an innovative international contractor that is fully committed to sustainable development, SADE offers a whole range of fixed or mobile solutions for recycling excavated material.
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After back-filling, compaction checking is a stage prior to the final acceptance certificate. It provides reassurance that the ground around the pipes is in accordance with its correct mechanical hold and that it will not cause any surface slippage especially under road ways.
When necessary, SADE will carry out these checks with a dynamic penetrometer. This device drives a rod into the back-fill at various points and measures at each one the relationship between rod penetration depth and energy applied. The diagram resulting from the series of tests is then compared with the expected theoretical results.
SADE’s teams have at their disposal a fleet of modern, multi-purpose compaction checking devices.
