AwalkwithMO

The beauty of Civil Engineering isn’t all about designing and building structures. It’s also about preserving life or nature as we know it. This week I witnessed the preservation of life at one of the sites I had the pleasuring of supervising.

BACK STORY : A train driver identified a lanslide sliding down towards the train tracks and straightaway raised an emergency alert. Now, a lanslide isn’t something to take lightly as this could lead to a deadly train accident where many, many lives could be lost. Common causes of landslide are eathquakes, volanoes, water etc. In this case, it was due to a very heavy rainfall.

Our job is to come up with a solution to navigate the water away from the track and remove the risk of futher failures in the area. This solution is installing a drainage ditch at the very top of the slope. So when it rains, instead of the water sliding downhill toward the track, the water is absord into this drainage and navigated elsewhere.

The problem was we couldn’t install this drainage where we thought we should. Reason for this was there are ‘DORMICE’ in this area. Previous ecology survey also verified this finding. Therefore we have to install it a bit futher up and this happens to be on a farmland. For those who aren’t aware, DORMICE are one of the few endangered species and hence by law protected by the goverment. To name a few : badgers, breading birds, bats etc. Many species of plants and animals are protected in England along with their habitats. However what you can and cannot do varies from species to species.

In our case a section of our job requires us to do some devegetation before we install this drainage . However, even when we moved away from the restricted area there were still concerns that there might be the presence of dormice within our area of works. Thus, by law we need the presence of an ecologist (someone specilised in endagered species) and an arborist (someone specilised in tree species) during these works so they can witness, dictate, guide and make sure we are not breaking the law. Everyone wins – happy days.

Interestingly, it was a different site experience for me as I got to speak with these experts and try to view the world through thier lenses to gain an appreciation of their work. Take for example, imagine waking up one lovely morning and finding out that there are people outside ready to demolish your house – not a nice feeling, right?. Well… I’m certain that’s how the family of DORMICE feel. You could say request that they either buy you a new house that fits your lifestyle or leave you be.

And YES …the work was successfully and safely carried out😊.

I’d like to think this is another highlight of my journey!!😎