Tesco has commenced work on a £20M development which will add to the existing facilities of Hemsworth, a small town in Yorkshire. The supermarket giant is building a 57,000ft² store in addition to a new bus station, library and school.

A significant challenge was how to accommodate all these structures and allow for customer parking, the contractor, Taylor Woodrow invited Phi Group to design, supply and build three different retaining solutions that maximised available space.

The first requirement was space for buses to negotiate the front of the store and provide an adequate turning area. Tesco required a robust, maintenance free retaining wall solution to create the necessary space and for this Phi proposed the use of their Soil Panel/Soil Nailed System. A 190 meter long excavated face was cut at 70º with an area of 1225m² and maximum height 6.2 meters and then soil nailed. Stability and structural support to the slope was provided by the soil nailing. Galvanised steel Soil Panel's were then attached to the protruding nails across the exposed face and filled with crushed rock to provide a maintenance free facing and protection to structural elements from accidental impact, important for a busy bus station.

Secondly, to maximise the available car parking area, a vertical retaining wall was required at a maximum height of 6.2 meters, over 70 meters long with a total face area of 235m² with the appearance of an attractive natural stone facing. Phi Group used their pre-cast concrete Titan Modular Block System incorporating soil reinforcement, to form the reinforced soil mass and attractive masonry effect facing.

Running the length of the site is a stream with a failing embankment that had to be built up to the proposed finished level of the customer car park, to a maximum height of 5.4 meters. To achieve this Phi Group proposed the use of over 1000m² of their Textomur reinforced soil system for the 350 meter long embankment built at 70º. Textomur consists of horizontal geotextiles typically at 600mm vertical centres within compacted cohesive or granular fill material. The facing to the slope is formed using a steel mesh ‘formwork' backed by a geosynthetic facing fabric which retains a layer of topsoil immediately behind the face which can then be hydro seeded.

Phi Group was the ideal choice of supplier for this project as it designs, supplies and builds various different retaining systems and in this case solved three very different challenges with three different solutions.

All this work meant that Tesco has benefited from having more space to build on and therefore in addition to the superstore was able to provide the other buildings. The community has benefited from a new library and school. There are also benefits to the environment through a new bus station built next to the store encouraging customers to leave their cars at home and a rebuilt embankment for a running stream.

Three challenges, three solutions and three groups that benefit on one site, from one company, Phi Group. Sometimes three into one does go!