How Temporary Shelters Can Help Long-Term Flood Defences

There is certainly plenty of construction activity currently taking place in some parts of the UK, whether it is the ongoing work on the surviving section of HS2 between London and Birmingham, the plethora of skyscrapers appearing in Manchester, or even the building of new sporting venues like Everton’s stadium in Liverpool’s northern docklands.

However, while new transport, housing, sport and leisure facilities are all on various agendas, much of the construction and engineering work that is needed is not about building things up, but preventing them from being flooded or even washed away.

This point has been highlighted by the Environment Agency, which has just started the ball rolling on its £3 billion Flood and Coastal Management Delivery Framework. It is seeking expressions of interest from contractors.

It stated: “Selected firms will be required to develop, design and deliver nature-based solutions as well as more traditional hard engineering solutions.”

While many of the existing partners are large and well-established construction and engineering firms, this is an opportunity to add more. But whoever the partners are that take part in fulfilling the framework’s projects, they will need to be fully equipped for a broad range of tasks, with projects ranging in value from £1 million to £75 million.

That will not just mean having earth-moving equipment, drills, or other mechanised tools, but also means of sheltering it - and workers - on site. Since many of the places prone to floods or where flood prevention and protection work may take place are outside the built environment, there will be a need to take temporary shelter facilities to them.

Coastal areas include some places that are very prone to storm damage or gradual erosion. While in some cases these will include the seafront areas of towns, in others the locations are more rural, with erosion placing small settlements, individual homes and farmland at risk, as well as occasionally posing a peril to the public through landslides and cliff collapses.

This is true of much of the east coast of England, with counties like Norfolk especially vulnerable. Norfolk County Council has estimated that without action to protect the coastline, over 1,000 properties will be lost to erosion by 2100.

Although rising sea levels and increasing storms are expected to be a major contributory factor to this, increasing the need for more robust sea defences, the problem cannot be attributed solely to climate change; coastal erosion is an ongoing phenomenon, its past victims including Dunwich in Suffolk, which was as big a port as London in Medieval times.

Engineering firms will need to set up with temporary shelters in a succession of vulnerable sites throughout these projects, providing a place of rest and shelter from the elements in poor weather for those on-site.

Projects will also take place inland and some of these may involve work upstream high in valleys, often using the ‘nature-based solutions’ referred to by the Environment Agency. These can include tree planting on lower hillsides to reduce the amount of water running off from upland areas - which get high levels of rainfall - into the river systems below.

Such work requires mobility and flexibility, something the most mobile of shelters will help provide.