Owners and operators
The contractor carries the means and methods. You carry the permit, the regulator relationship, the landowner relationship and the consequence. Those are not the same risk, and the second one does not transfer with a contract.
What tends to be true on your side of the table
- The crossing is a small line item until it is the only line item anyone is talking about.
- Your engineering firm is competent and may have no trenchless construction experience at all.
- The method statement you are asked to approve is written by the party it protects.
- When drilling fluid reaches surface in a watercourse, the reportable event is yours.
- Nobody on your team is watching pull force at eleven at night.
What we do about it
Get the crossing right before tender
Feasibility, alignment and method settled early, so you are tendering a buildable scope instead of discovering it during construction.
Read the submissions properly
A technical review of what has been proposed, so the award is made on engineering rather than on price against an undefined scope.
Own the plan
An execution plan that satisfies your regulator and your own assurance requirements, with the limits and the response ladder written down.
Be there when it is drilled
Our engineer on the lease with written authority, watching the numbers that predict failure and empowered to stop the pull.
Get the records
A turnover package that is complete when the crew leaves — the bore log, the calibration, the pull record, the as-built.
Be ready if it goes wrong
An immediate independent assessment that preserves the record and often settles the technical question before positions harden.
An hour on the telephone at route-selection stage, before the alignment is fixed. Moving a crossing on a drawing costs nothing. Moving it after the permit is issued costs a season.