Specialist Structural Repair and Maintenance

As a trusted expert, Balvac sustainably extends the life of our nation’s infrastructure by delivering innovative structural repair, strengthening, protection and maintenance solutions to return our customers assets to full capacity and extend their working life.

Operating in the transport, energy, and power sectors with a focus on highway infrastructure, we specialise in structural concrete repair, corrosion protection, bridge strengthening, bearing replacement, and concrete carriageway rehabilitation for customers including National Highways and local/regional authorities. We also provide structural health monitoring, diagnostic testing, surveying, noise vibration and air quality monitoring, and pile testing services.

Our customer-focused approach allows us to efficiently identify and establish project priorities to deliver innovative repair and maintenance solutions. Drawing on over 90 years of experience and leveraging our skilled resources and dedicated supply chain, we can deliver projects ranging from £100K to £10M.

We implement a 'Detect, Diagnose, Develop, Deliver' approach offering a complete professional service from scheme development and design through to project delivery. 

Our services include:

Early engagement is our proven way of adding value and reducing risk for our customers. 

By engaging Balvac early in the project design and development stage, we can provide innovation and technical excellence, drawing on our many years of experience of structural repair, strengthening, protection and refurbishment work.

Our qualified engineering and pre-construction teams will focus on the technical lifecycle of a project to work collaboratively with customers and designers. Including:

  • Survey and inspection
  • Constructability review
  • Method and product selection
  • Design approval and temporary works management
  • Technical standards compliance

We offer a professional service from project inception through to the delivery of the final solution.

Our engineering and operational teams undertake survey, inspection and testing services to gather data on the condition of structures, and we work with asset owners and designers to determine and develop repair, strengthening, protection and maintenance solutions. These include:

  • Visual condition inspections and NDT (inc Lo Cover/GPR/Ultrasonics)
  • Bearing inspections
  • Delamination surveys
  • Post tensioning special inspections
  • Crack surveys and monitoring
  • Materials sampling
  • Depth of carbonation and chemical analysis
  • Half cell potential mapping
  • Resistivity testing

Balvac undertakes all types of concrete repair and protection works to civil and building structures. In addition, Balvac can offer a full condition survey and diagnostic testing service. 

  • Hand placed concrete repairs 
  • Dry and wet spray concrete 
  • Flow-able concrete repairs 
  • Hand and spray applied protective coatings and corrosion inhibitors 
  • Hydro-demolition

Balvac has installed CP systems on highway infrastructure, commercial and retail buildings, multi storey car parks and marine structures. In addition, we can offer our customers a complete Cathodic Protection design and installation service. 

  • Sacrificial anode systems 
  • Hybrid anode systems 
  • Impressed current cathodic protection systems 

Balvac originally patented the vacuum assisted resin injection processes used today, and continues to offer these specialist concrete remediation techniques to various asset owners. 

  • Structural and protective crack injection 
  • Vacuum-assisted resin injection of cracks, voids and de-laminations in concrete 
  • Vacuum void grouting of concrete pavement slabs 
  • Pavement slab lifting and grouting 

Balvac can provide water-stopping and water management services to many assets; road and rail tunnels, service tunnels, shafts, basements and water retaining concrete structures. 

  • Injection of fast reacting hydrophilic and hydrophobic resin materials 
  • Water control and management 
  • Consolidation grouting using cementitious or resin-based grouts 

Balvac can offer specialist strengthening techniques using glass fibre, carbon fibre and aramid materials to repair or enhance the capacity of many civil and building assets, including bridge decks, bridge or building columns, suspended floors and adapted/modified structures. We can also offer a complete design and installation service. 

  • 'Pultruded' plates 
  • Fabric materials 
  • Ultra High Modulus (UHM) bespoke plate solutions 

Balvac provide a full post tensioning design, supply, installation and maintenance service for a wide range of structures. These include bridges, multi-storey buildings and circular tanks. We also undertake the monitoring, testing and replacement of tendons within existing structures such as nuclear power station reactor buildings. 
 
We work on both bonded tendon and un-bonded tendon installations and our works are externally audited through our CARES accreditation. 
 
Our experienced engineers also provide preliminary design and budget pricing for schemes at early planning stages. 

Our Balvac team can also provide specialist testing and analysis services. This includes:

Pile testing 

BALVAC Testing and Analysis Division is a UKAS accredited testing laboratory No. 0721; testing services include:

  • Dynamic pile testing
  • Cross hole sonic logging pile integrity testing
  • Transient dynamic response pile integrity testing

We also offer the following services:

  • Case pile wave analysis program (CAPWAP)
  • Sonic pulse echo pile integrity testing
  • The facility for undertaking GRLWEAP driveability desk studies

Dynamic test data is instantly transmitted to the office from anywhere in the world and analysed using CAPWAP. This facility enables real-time analysis of the pile test data.

Environmental monitoring

We offer a full range of environmental monitoring services with flexible response times to suit your requirements.

They include:

  • Contaminated land
  • Soil sampling and analysis
  • Water sampling and analysis
  • Legionella testing
  • Air quality monitoring
  • Gas monitoring

Diagnostic testing

We deliver structural, diagnostic and geotechnical monitoring for buildings, bridges, car parks and industrial premises. We survey structures to assess the nature and extent of any defects and their probable causes. This allows customers to develop robust repair strategies.

We offer expert advice and site investigations in a range of applications. This includes bore holes, trial pitting, embankment slips, geotechnical diagnosis and failure diagnosis. We also have in-house expertise in soils, rocks and man-made materials.

We specialise in diagnosing the condition of materials in all types of structures including reinforced concrete, post-tensioned and pre-stressed concrete, steel, iron and timber.

We have in-house expertise working with plastics, paints, coatings, cementitious and bituminous materials, epoxies, polyesters and other resins, radionuclides and toxicity of materials.

Structural monitoring 

We offer a full structural monitoring service. We use state-of-the-art technology including:

  • Ground penetrating radar
  • Remote crack monitoring, tiltmeters and inclinometers
  • Strain gauging including residual stress measurement in post-tensioned structures
  • Ground remediation evaluation and assessment
  • Ultrasonics
    Magnetostrictive surveys
  • Radiography and tomography
  • Acoustic and frequency monitoring
  • Seismic monitoring
  • Piezometers
  • Thermography
  • Photo-elastic analysis
  • Topographic surveys with real-time triggered alarm systems

We produce bespoke solutions to complex challenges and solve one-off problems. 

Noise and vibration monitoring 

We provide a comprehensive range of noise and vibration monitoring services. This includes prediction, measurement and the control of both environmental and personal exposures to noise and vibration.

We also offer:

  • Short and long-term equipment hire
  • Attended or remote monitoring surveys
  • Analysis and presentation of results
  • Monitoring systems

These services are available for all industries or circumstances where noise and vibration are of concern.

Noise and vibration prediction

We provide noise predictions for construction sites using the methodology described in BS 5228 Part 1. Our predictions are processed using the latest version of CadnaA bespoke noise modelling software. Plant specific noise levels are used whenever possible, together with noise levels from the BS 5228 database where actual measurements are not available.

Vibration predictions, if required, are based on previous data obtained by measurement of similar operations in typical ground conditions.

A selection of our projects

Download a selection of our brochures