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Be it an underground storage facility in a mined cavern, a salt cavern or a porous medium, Geostock supports facility construction from the selection of construction company through to commissioning.
Acting most of the time as owner’s engineer, on-site or from our design office, Geostock checks that the built facility is consistent with the design and the very highest standards. In most cases, this process follows the studies carried out previously by Geostock engineering.
Construction management work may also include taking over complete management of the construction process with the mobilisation of a multidisciplinary team in situ to closely supervise the construction company.
Geostock also works as a project construction manager responsible for the smooth implementation of the project in terms of time, budget and performance.
As part of a consortium in charge of building the structure (EPC contractor), Geostock uses its underground-storage expertise to produce detailed engineering and ensure the procurement and construction of the structure. The issue here is no longer about assisting the project owner or project manager but about actual building.
These various responsibilities are all informed by the same quality requirement.
Geostock provides assistance for the selection of the construction company or consortium responsible for detailed engineering, procurement and construction (EPC contractors). This is a customary consultancy service for Geostock that may include handling requests for technical clarifications, comparing technical and financial offers, and making recommendation for award.
Geostock reviews detailed studies produced by the contractor responsible for detail engineering or reviews of execution studies performed by the construction company. Depending on the type of storage, this may concern underground civil engineering (bolting and shotcrete designs, formwork for concrete structures, reinforcement for concrete structures, methods of execution for drilling, venting, mucking, dewatering, etc.), well architectures, well-heads, leaching designs, surface facilities for leaching (including water supply and brine discharge), and surface facilities for storage operation. All this review work is based on Geostock‘s experience in construction management, and also on the documentation corpus generally prepared upstream in preceding phases (basic design, technical specifications). Detailed and execution studies are usually reviewed at Geostock‘s offices; the process takes place over several months, depending on the progress made on the detailed or execution studies.
Geostock provides its clients with engineers who are used to switching from design to construction. For mined caverns, civil engineering and geotechnical experts are called upon, together with hydrogeologists to supervise the testing of drilling operations. Geostock has developed a unique methodology for testing the hydrodynamic sealing of mined caverns. Geologists are also involved, either on an ad hoc or permanent basis, assessing the quality of the rock, and in particular its fracture density, to update gallery reinforcement strategies and refine the three-dimensional geological model of the site.
Salt caverns or porous media storage call for professionals from the deep-drilling, leaching, well-testing, logging and echometric sectors. Here again, geologists are called on to draw up geological sections during the core acquisition phases.
Lastly, regardless of storage type, Geostock can assign specialised mechanical, electrical and instrumentation engineers, including specialist corrosion control engineers. If a micro-seismic monitoring system is needed, Geostock offers the services of its specialists to supervise the installation and calibration of the geophones and acquisition system.
Support during start-up phases: commissioning, performance tests and first product filling and withdrawal are essential steps for which Geostock can mobilise teams of varying sizes. depending on the requirements.
Geostock ensures various contractual responsibilities in terms of HSE on construction sites, such as drawing up HSE plans and setting up shift supervision. Where the client explicitly retains this responsibility, Geostock nevertheless endeavours to share its HSE experience of underground storage facilities.
Geostock can prepare operating manuals and train future operators during the construction phase. While this activity is more related to Geostock‘s operational activity, major synergies between construction management teams and future operation teams are necessary.
Construction management is an essential link between design and operation, allowing cross-fertilisation between the three phases. Geostock has acquired a unique know-how in this field, taking advantage of the engineering-operating synergies to drive a continuous improvement process.
