Geovert

Over two hundred Erdox avalanche barriers - protecting the residential community at White Pine Canyon, Park City - had sustained enough deformation from a previous season's snowpack that they needed to be removed from the slope entirely. With no road access, all equipment and materials had to be moved by helicopter. Each barrier was carried to a staging area, rebuilt with new stems, sockets and components, and then airlifted back to its original anchor point on the mountain.

The operation was dependent on available weather windows but the full system was restored and back at capacity, protecting the residents below, before the following winter season. A great effort from the crew working in a demanding alpine environment.

A wet winter in New Zealand destabilised a road reserve slope in a residential suburb of Wellington, resulting in a landslide that undercut a private property above and threatened the road below. Wellington City Council contracted Geovert to stabilise it.

A services scan at the crest of the slope revealed a dense network of underground utilities that ruled out rope access in the area where the shotcrete had to be applied. Geovert and consulting engineers ENGEO worked through the problem and arrived at a bespoke scaffold system designed to sit above a live road, within a narrow corridor and accommodate a slope face that changed geometry with each drop down. Three drilling methods ran in combination - wagon drills at the top, a scaffold-mounted drill mast for the inaccessible section and an excavator-mounted drill mast with a custom boom extension working from the base.

Asbestos contamination in the debris created further issues that needed additional crew certification and environmental controls before clearing could continue.

The project was completed successfully with Wellington City Council confirming they were looking forward to working with Geovert again. This project was recognised with a finalist nomination at the Civil Contractors New Zealand Awards 2025. Brilliant collaborative and problem-solving work from the team.

Depressurisation drilling on an open cut wall can be an access problem as much as a drilling problem.

At this mine in Australia, a large unbenched footwall dipping at around 23 degrees and approximately 200 metres in height, was showing signs of deformation. Visible cracking had been identified, and both radar and prism monitoring systems were detecting movement. Site investigations pointed to groundwater pressure as the driving force, and depressurisation drilling was determined to be the appropriate response.

The geometry of the wall created an immediate equipment challenge. With no benches and a continuous dip at that angle, there were no conventional drilling machines capable of traversing the slope and drilling as required. Access road construction wasn't a viable option either. Geovert deployed the Spider excavator, which traversed the footwall and drilled vertical depressurisation holes to 40 metres depth.

As well as drain holes, instrumentation holes were drilled with piezometric data confirming groundwater pressure was reducing, and slope stability monitoring showed regressive movement following completion of the drill holes.

Vertical and horizontal drain hole drilling for slope depressurisation is a core part of Geovert's mining ground support capability, delivered across a range of site conditions and equipment configurations.