Daedalus is a former Ministry of Defence Royal Navy Air Station comprising a 180 ha of vacant and redundant land. The site transferred to Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and Marine Coastguard Agency (MCA) joint ownership in 2006 becoming the ‘Solent Enterprise Zone’.
The HCA subsequently purchased the airfield from the MCA in 2013 along with land from the MoD as part of a £1.52m investment and CampbellReith provided the technical support services during the pre-purchase environmental due diligence (EDD) phase giving concise, technical advice to inform potential commercial liabilities and abnormal development costs.
The EDD work comprised detailed research into the site’s history and historical development and undertaking extensive intrusive contamination surveys including those for radioactive contamination and Unexploded Ordnance. The UXO issue was principally associated with legacy of ‘airfield denial pipemines’ placed beneath the runways during the Second World War in addition to numerous explosives stores, caches, torpedo workshops, Special Forces hangars and Guided Missile Building.
The site also exhibited radioactive contamination (Radium 226) associated with former aircraft dumping grounds, burials and fire training areas. Several phases of investigation using both surface deployed GPS and intrusive methods have help to identify the affected areas.
CampbellReith was also asked to evaluate proposed construction budgets and schedule cost assumptions for the infrastructure improvements. The brief also required identification of key technical, cost and time risks.
A GIS Site Model (GISSMo) has been created for the Daedalus to collate documents relating to all aspects of the site, both historical and current, and locating them geographic so that information can be retrieved quickly by anyone in the team helping to ensure that knowledge about the site is not lost as various sections change ownership.
