Evergreen Rapid Transit

For this project Henry Foundation Drilling Inc. installed 150 secant piles 3’ in diameter, with depths up to 70’. The secant piles created a shoring structure to allow a tunnel-boring machine to drill through Burnaby Mountain as part of the Evergreen Rapid Transit Line Project. Timeline was of the utmost importance, so we employed three drill rigs in a tight area and completed the project in a month. Drilling conditions on this project were difficult as an old riverbed lay underneath the soil. Some of the boulders encountered were as big as 8’ wide and 5’ deep. Despite these adverse conditions, we completed the project on time. This project received an award from the Vancouver Regional Construction Association.

HFDI was selected to complete all the drilled shaft packages for the new rapid transit line stations.

This station and special structure required two 6’ diameter drilled shafts to 66’ depth. Challenges included a small work site and working within feet of the live elevated guideway carrying the current and active SkyTrain. After the 6’ shafts were installed the machinery was moved to do a special structure carrying the guideway over an active restaurant. Nine-foot diameter shafts up to 21m deep advanced under polymer slurry were installed as close as 8’ from the active and still open restaurant.

This station had 19 pcs 6’ diameter drilled piles with permanent 6’ x 1” wall pipe. Pile conditions were tough with artesian water pressures and different layers of cobbles and boulders.

This job consisted of installing 10 piles sized 914mm and 610mm piles in diameter to depths of 34m. This job had 15mm per second vibration tolerances at the bridge abutments and Henry Drilling was contracted to install them using our rotary drilling methods to work within the vibration monitoring tolerances.