From the simple to the complex, we look forward to learning more about your project.
Our crews expertly navigate rivers, urban environments, challenging terrains, and environmentally sensitive areas using both traditional and trenchless methods with safety and precision.
Gas Distribution Infrastructure
Specialties Served
Solve gas distribution challenges.
Gas utilities must maintain and expand distribution networks while minimizing community disruption and environmental impact. Both traditional and trenchless methods offer valuable solutions:
- Traditional Trenching: Reliable and effective for many projects, though it may require more time and careful planning to mitigate community impact.
- Trenchless Technologies: Reduce surface disturbance, minimize environmental permitting needs, and navigate around existing infrastructure to lower utility strike risks.
We adhere to PG&E safety standards, managing all operator qualifications (OQ’s) with an in-house proctor to ensure compliance and safety.
Partner with PDB for a safe, efficient, and tailored approach to your gas utility projects.
Gas infrastructure projects in urban environments require careful planning to meet both technical and community needs. Both traditional and trenchless methods provide effective solutions:
- Traditional Trenching: Ideal for comprehensive projects, offering direct access for installations and repairs, ensuring thorough and reliable work.
- Trenchless Methods: Minimize surface disruption, protect existing utilities, and maintain neighborhood aesthetics, making them an urban-friendly option.
Selecting the right approach ensures efficient, safe, and community-friendly gas infrastructure updates that respect both technical requirements and the urban environment.
Environmental and geotechnical consultants often face complex challenges when working on gas distribution projects. Sensitive habitats, unstable soil conditions, and strict regulations can quickly derail conventional excavation plans.
Trenchless methods solve problems for consultants:
- Reduce ecological disruption: They protect sensitive environments by avoiding extensive digging.
- Navigate complex soil conditions: They allow precise installation through variable soil strata and groundwater conditions.
- Simplifies permitting and compliance: Their light surface impact means lower compliance risks and an easier permitting process.
PDB’s trenchless methods balance gas infrastructure needs with environmental stewardship.
The energy, health and safety, and transport sectors face unique challenges in gas infrastructure projects, from environmental concerns to maintaining operations in high-traffic and sensitive areas. Both traditional and trenchless methods offer tailored solutions to meet these needs:
- Extended Reach and Reduced Disruption: Trenchless technology allows for the installation or replacement of pipelines in remote, difficult-to-reach, or high-traffic areas with minimal surface disruption and a smaller worksite footprint.
- Enhanced Safety and Compliance: Trenchless methods reduce environmental hazards, lower the risk of accidents, and provide precise navigation through complex terrains, ensuring safer and more compliant projects.
- Cost and Time Efficiency: By avoiding extensive digging, trenchless methods help cut project timelines and costs, preserving natural landscapes and reducing public inconvenience.
- Adaptability Across Challenges: Whether upgrading aging infrastructure, navigating urban environments, or ensuring precision in sensitive areas, PDB’s approach balances efficiency, safety, and environmental stewardship.
SAFETY
Digging trenches is a risky business.Traditional open-cut trenching methods for gas line installations come with a host of safety hazards.
Trench collapses, striking underground utilities, and exposure to traffic are just a few of the dangers that put workers and the public at risk.
Trenchless methods eliminate these risks by going underground without the need for extensive excavation.
COST SAVINGS WITH HDD
Don’t break it, don’t pay to fix it.Open-cut trenching leaves a trail of destruction requiring expensive repairs to roads, sidewalks, and landscaping.
Trenchless approaches avoid this collateral damage and associated costs.
Less need for traffic control and detours delivers further savings.
MINIMIZE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Surgical precision preserves the natural landscape.Trenching disrupts ecosystems and wetlands.
Trenchless, precise methodology lays pipe while leaving the environment virtually untouched—no unsightly scars, no displaced wildlife, no regrets.
BYPASS OBSTACLES
Bypass surface obstacles by going underground.Rivers, buildings, busy streets—trenchless methods allow gas line installations to steer accurately underground, bypassing surface obstacles.
We access restricted areas and preserve sites where above-ground space is limited.
Custom Solutions
Trenchless Technology: Conquering subterranean challenges.
From dense soil to solid rock.
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Customized Bore Paths
For gas distribution, trenchless methods allow custom-designed bore paths to navigate around obstacles like rivers, buildings, and roads while accessing challenging install locations.
Navigating Soil Conditions
Bore through or strategically avoid mixed ground conditions.
Trenchless rigs use specialized drilling heads to handle different soil types encountered—rock, clay, sand, and more.
Precise Grade Control
Maintain exact slopes and grades with laser guidance systems. These systems allow gas lines to hold to precise elevations over long distances.
Extended Cross-Country Reaches
Span cross-country without repeated surface work.
Cross large geographical barriers like lakes with extended reach trenchless methods, eliminating multiple entry/exit points.
Environmental Monitoring
Use environmental monitoring and mitigation strategies to comply with regulations and minimize ecosystem impact during installs of new gas lines.
Integrated Mapping Technologies
Map underground obstacles with precision with integrated GIS mapping and ground penetrating radar (GPR) to avoid obstacles and existing utilities.
Varying Pipe Diameters
We have trenchless methods for varying pipe sizes, from small service lines to large transmission mains.
Multi-Conduit Installation
Use trenchless multi-duct systems to simultaneously install gas lines along with other utilities like fiber optics or water pipes in a single, shared borehole.
Trenchless Technology’s versatility opens possibilities for telecom, environmental remediation, and utilities.
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