Country: United Kingdom
Key Area: Other Infrastructure
Services: Civil Engineering,Geotechnical Engineering

Opus has completed work to investigate contamination and geotechnics at a former naval explosives depot in Gosport, ‘Priddy’s Hard’ having been involved at the site, acquired by Barratt Homes from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), since 1994.

The final stage involved specification work for the decontamination of the old shell filling rooms that house the TNT boiling room.
Royal Ordnance, now part of BaE systems, was brought in to provide specialist advice on explosives residues. They determined that the listed buildings which contained unexploded powder residues within the building fabric should be destroyed by controlled fire.

Since the project began, over 700 homes have been built following a carefully set out strategy, which saw Opus working closely with Gosport Borough Council and the Environment Agency. Investigative work involved soil decontamination which included radioactive decontamination by specialists. Techniques such as leach testing of soils, water quality and gas monitoring, and special analysis into toxicology of chemicals used in explosive manufacture were employed.