Cobham Services HGV Extension, Surrey – Projects

The existing services at Cobham were over capacity with a need for additional HGV parking to meet the obligations with Highways England. The additional parking area provides a safe environment for Truckers to sleep and recover, with access to facilities providing benefit to their health and wellbeing.

Space was a premium, with only one location on site considered suitable for the construction of a new parking area. The selected location had considerable challenges as it was located on a steeply sloping part of the site and was a considerable distance from the existing surface water drainage system.

We gave careful consideration to the proposed site levels and designed them to reduce the amount of cut as far as possible whilst ensuring that the proposed gradients were suited use for HGV parking.

We assessed various options for the construction build-ups with the chosen solution being a stabilised subbase. This resulted in reduced construction thickness meaning less material to cart away. This provided cost benefit to the client, reduced vehicle movements on the road, reduced CO2 emissions and reduced import of subbase.

We also re-thought the below ground drainage design. The planning scheme was to collect surface water in an attenuation tank before directing to an existing surface water pumping station. We changed the approach detailing the drainage to drain via gravity to a side extension to the existing balancing pond. This solution meant there was no reliance on pumping, there was no plastic geocellular tanks whilst an enhanced landscape was provided for surface water management.