Golden Arrow

Golden Arrow drills rather than digs. Horizontal directional drilling puts water, gas, electricity and fibre under roads, railways, canals and shorelines without opening the ground above them, which is what makes the work possible in dense cities, on live carriageways and on protected sites.

The fleet runs from 30 tonne Vermeer rigs up to a 286 tonne XCMG XZ2860, with AVN slurry tunnelling machines for bores from 800 mm to 4,000 mm and pipe jacking where the ground calls for it. Bore paths are tracked with DigiTrak and ParaTrack guidance systems, and the company keeps its own splicing and OTDR testing equipment for the fibre it installs.

One specialism is seawater intakes for desalination plants. A microporous HDPE intake pulled in by HDD keeps construction off the shoreline, leaves the marine habitat intact, and delivers cleaner feed water than an open intake, on a shorter permitting path.

The company works in Egypt and Libya, where its crews support reconstruction of water, power and telecom networks.