Belfast stretches across the floodplains of the River Lagan, where the notorious Belfast Sleech—a soft, compressible estuarine silt up to 10 metres thick—dominates the shallow geology. Combine that with an average of 157 rainy days per year and you have a recipe for pavement failure long before the design life expires. Our rigid pavement design work in Belfast starts from the ground up. We characterise the subgrade properly because a 300 mm concrete slab on a weak, saturated foundation simply won't cut it. By pairing detailed site investigation with the DMRB HD 26/06 framework, we deliver jointed concrete pavements that handle everything from container traffic at the port to heavy bus loads on arterial routes. The approach also leans on in-situ permeability data when drainage layers are critical, ensuring water doesn't pool beneath the slab.
In Belfast, rigid pavement design isn't about the concrete mix alone—it's about understanding how 10 metres of soft clay will interact with a slab under 20 years of heavy traffic and 157 rainy days each year.
