Belfast Tidal Flood Alleviation Scheme

Tidal flood risk is of most concern, with approximately 560 residential and 460 non-residential properties currently at risk from a significant tidal event.

As part of a two year, £18 million flood defence investment that began the construction phase in August 2022, MM Engineering were commissioned to work alongside a consortium of stakeholders to provide a range of flood defence products including flood gates, glazing and flood wall design to support this busy capital city community.

Flood defence on this scale required a number of bespoke options. Our bank of tidal defence experience have allowed us to create bespoke flood glazing that is both thinner and more attractive than off-the-shelf glazing products. involved the construction of an in-house testing facility, currently dedicated to the testing.

Critically, our ability to provide in-house design, UK manufacture alongside full installation of flood defensive products ensures we are able to remain agile to the client’s requirements, designing and installing products across a large coastal area that off-the-shelf solutions and providers would struggle to keep up with.

As unique challenges arose, our team adapted design work. Shallow underground services in installation locations limited excavations to 300mm and took our design team back to the drawing board, redesigning and retesting prototypes of planned flood gates at our UK site, where dedicated in-house testing facility has been installed specifically to test prototypes up to a 10KN water weight load for the Belfast Tidal Flood Alleviation Scheme - saving the client months in lead times between design, testing and install.

Construction phase continues in Belfast, with further install of flood gates and over 500m of flood glazing planned for install as the project continues.