"We solved a number of problems with a single solution,& quot; says Martin. "Not only were the taxis unable to drive through the site, we were able to get rid of spoiled rubble from the adjacent factory site and in the quarry itself. The site is now better than before and our client is happy as we went beyond the original brief which was to save a company railway line that was in danger of being undercut by erosion."

The quarry rehabilitation project is part of a bigger project that has been ongoing for about 3 years. "I used Civil Designer Road, Survey & Terrain and AllyCAD," says Martin.

"For the quarry rehabilitation I created a dead-end road that stopped the taxis, and then I created sloped terraces along the old quarried face. Using the Road module I treated the alignment as a road and then repeated the terrace pattern on either side of the road. Despite the fact that there were two different alignment options, the software made it easy to change the design."

"There was some in-situ rubble at the bottom of the quarry. Added to the rubble from the factory, there was about 10 000m3. Another 5 500m3 fill was cut from the quarry face to form the terraces."

The terraces were covered with 100mm of topsoil and Hydroseeded in the first week in September. "It covered very quickly and the site looks much better."

"I was able to create an AVI animation and literally 'drive' down the dead end road on the screen. The Surveyor used the same cross sections that I used in the Roads module to set out the works," says Martin. "The whole design went quickly, and it even worked out all the volumes."
 

"I also designed the next phase of the quarry using a different method. Using the Terrain module I created a model of the desired shape. Then I tracked an elevation up the sides of the model at 5%, which became the outer side of the terrace. Making parallel points 2 metres away, these points became the inner side of the terrace. Repeating this process several times the end result was a bank with parallel terraces all along the face."

"Our client is very concerned about the environment and we will be designing a number of pollution controls in the future. One of these is a 3.5km cut-off trench spanning the entire site with monitoring points further down the slope," says Martin.

A delighted Martin added, "The software is intuitive and easy to use, I can simply concentrate on doing my work. We are able to deliver above our clients expectations, Civil Designer does that for me too."