In December 2016 a fire broke out at the M3 southbound motorway services at Fleet. The fire was contained within the restaurant building by firefighters and fortunately no one was hurt.
The job of rebuilding the fire gutted building was awarded to Galliford Try and CGL was instructed to undertake a site investigation to provide geotechnical data for the design of the new building and to assess the potential risks for contamination and ground gases. The contamination assessment included samples of drain sediment and topsoil, as well as the underlying soils, in order to review the risks from asbestos, potentially mobilised during the fire, and PFOS and PFOA contamination from the fire suppression foam used to tackle the blaze. The assessment indicated limited contamination in the groundwater which was attributed to surface run-off from the fire fighting and was not considered to pose a risk to controlled water receptors.
Only limited remediation is required which is being undertaken by Galliford Try during construction. CGL is now undertaking third-party verification of the installation of a ground gas membrane.
