Holding back the tide: GRS delivers roads, sewers and leaky dams for Persimmon in Bromborough

This Bromborough scheme is the latest in a long line of jobs for Persimmon, one of GRS’s longest-standing customers.

The roads and sewers package is GRS’s core work. The finished streets now serve the first homes at River Walk.

The leaky dams were a different kind of job - something different for the team, but absolutely no problem to our gangs.

Leaky dams are rows of heavy timber logs fixed across a channel on driven posts. Gaps are left so water still flows through under normal conditions. In heavy rain they hold the water back and slow it down, so the basin fills steadily instead of sending a surge downstream.

GRS installed the timber structures and lined the channel bed and banks with rock to stop the flow scouring them away. The work ties into a concrete outfall headwall fitted with a flap valve.

What makes this site harder is the Mersey. When the tide comes in, water levels in the channel rise quickly, so there is little margin for error on levels, fixings or programme.

Tom Keane, MD and owner of GRS Contractors, said: “Persimmon keep coming back to us, and that’s because we deliver. Roads and sewers are our bread and butter, but the leaky dams were a different kind of job. When the Mersey comes in, the water in that channel gets high, and quickly. You can’t guess your levels on a job like that. It needs people who know what they’re doing, and that’s who we put on it.”

Bromborough adds to GRS’s work for Persimmon across the North West and North Wales, including Pepper Lane in Standish and Jubilee Way in Deeside.

GRS Contractors has delivered civil engineering works for the housebuilding sector for more than 60 years.