Buckler’s Park, Crowthorne

Project Summary

Buckler’s Park, Crowthorne is a major multi-phase regeneration transforming the former Transport Research Laboratory site into a vibrant residential-led community. To help deliver the vision, EPG provided specialist support to LEAP Environmental Ltd and Vistry Group, one of the UK’s leading housebuilders, through the deployment of remote, continuous ground gas monitoring systems.

Our data-led approach enabled phased risk assessments aligned to construction sequencing, giving LEAP and Vistry real-time, robust insights across the site.

This allowed for targeted mitigation and confident decision-making, streamlining progress and reducing unnecessary design measures.
Vistry is delivering the project in phases, with the wider masterplan delivering over 1,000 new homes, a country park, green infrastructure, and a range of community facilities on completion.

Challenges

Large, multi-phase site: Co-ordinating investigations across a large, multi-phase, live development required flexibility and phased deployment.

During construction: Monitoring had to be integrated without disruption to enabling works or delaying programme milestones.

Potential for overdesign: Without robust, continuous data, conservative assumptions may have led to unnecessary protection measures and verification regimes.

Regulatory scrutiny: Outputs needed to be defensible to local authorities and suitable for sign-off under planning and environmental regulations.

Solution

To overcome the risk of overdesign and avoid costly delays, EPG implemented a smart, phased monitoring strategy using its GasfluX continuous monitoring systems. Each unit was equipped with sensors for methane, carbon dioxide, oxygen, volatile organic compounds, and water levels, and installed in multiple boreholes across the site. Monitoring data was supplemented with live weather data from the nearest publicly available source.

This setup enabled LEAP and Vistry to make informed, real-time decisions about gas risk and construction sequencing, grounded in robust, site-specific evidence rather than assumptions.

LEAP opted to follow the CL:AIRE Technical Bulletin 16 approach, a post-construction monitoring methodology pioneered by EPG, with our team members credited as authors of the national guidance. EPG completed site-based risk assessments and provided method statements to ensure safe deployment during active construction phases.

By breaking the site into manageable zones and continuously refining the risk profile, we enabled the project team to apply protection measures only where necessary, reducing embodied carbon, cutting cost, reducing complexity, and accelerating progress.

Results

EPG’s monitoring strategy enabled the early and confident delineation of gas risk zones, allowing construction to proceed safely in lower-risk areas while targeted investigations continued elsewhere. This phased approach prevented unnecessary gas protection measures from being designed or installed, delivering cost savings, streamlining verification efforts, and accelerating the overall construction programme.

By reducing the extent of gas membranes and verification activities, the project team lowered installation complexity, minimised the number of trades required on site, and decreased exposure to construction risk. The reduced scope of protection measures also resulted in a significant reduction in embodied carbon associated with materials and logistics.

Crucially, the use of real-time, continuous data provided a robust evidence base to support gas risk reclassification and planning compliance, giving both the developer and regulator confidence in the mitigation strategy.