Coverage
We are based on Teesside and we drill the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. The rig and crew travel to the crossing, wherever it is.
Trenchless work is a small, specialist trade. There is no drilling contractor on every high street, so most of our jobs come to us because of what the crossing needs, not because of how close we happen to be.
Our yard is at Thorpe Thewles, near Stockton-on-Tees, and the North East is our strongest patch. It is not our only one. In any given year the rigs are as likely to be on a runway in Cumbria, a motorway verge in Gloucestershire or a data centre at Slough as they are on Teesside. We have been doing it that way since 2005.
Below is where the work has actually been. Every job listed is a real one, and most of them have a fuller write-up elsewhere on the site.
Around the country
Our home patch, and where we are best known. Teesside, County Durham, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland.
Across the Humber and down through Yorkshire, including one of our largest grid-connection jobs.
Regular work the length of Scotland, as far north as Aberdeen and Inverness.
Motorway and airfield crossings across the north west.
Rail and utility crossings across South Wales.
Including the job we are best known for, a 900mm gravity outfall drilled through rock.
A part of the country we work in a good deal, from Gloucestershire down to Cornwall.
Airports, data centres, motorways and river crossings across London, the Thames Valley and the home counties.
Getting to you
A directional drilling spread is a self-contained thing. The rig, the drill pipe, the mud system, the tooling and the guidance kit all move together, and the crew move with them. We are not assembling a team when we get there.
For work away from home the crew stays local to the job for its duration, which usually makes for a quicker, tidier programme than travelling in and out daily. It also means that if the ground throws up a surprise, the people who can do something about it are already on site rather than a day away.
On bigger schemes we often carry out the design as well, so the bore profile, the settlement assessment and the approvals paperwork are done by the same people who will drill it. That matters more the further you are from us, because it removes a round of handover.
Because there is work on somewhere in the country most of the year, it is also common that we already have a job running near you. Where the dates line up we will tie the two together, which keeps the travel down for both of them. Worth asking when you enquire, because it can make a difference to the price and to how soon we can get to you.
Questions answered
No. Our yard is at Thorpe Thewles near Stockton-on-Tees and the North East is where we are best known, but the rig and crew travel and always have. Recent work runs from Glasgow to Heathrow, and from Cumbria to Somerset. We have drilled as far north as Aberdeen and Inverness, as far south west as Truro, and across Wales and Northern Ireland.
Less than people expect. Mobilisation varies with the job rather than being a flat figure, but on a crossing of any real size it is a small part of the total, so distance rarely changes the shape of the price. On smaller work it is often only a van and a moling kit going down, which costs very little to move. Our overheads are North East overheads too, not southern ones, so the total frequently lands in much the same place as a contractor closer to you. And because we are working around the country all year, there is often a job already running in your area that we can tie yours in with.
Our own. The same rigs and the same crew that work our home patch travel to the job, so the people drilling your crossing are the people we train, certify and stand behind. Where a job needs plant or groundworks we do not carry, we either arrange it or work alongside whoever the main contractor already has on site, whichever is more cost effective.
Send us the drawing, or just the basics of what you are trying to cross and what you need to put through it. We will tell you whether it can be drilled, whether another method suits it better, and what it is likely to cost. That first view costs nothing and does not commit you to anything.
Tell us what you need to cross, what is going through it and roughly where you are. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right firm for it.