John Creed and Associates designed the structure of the building on Wexford’s Custom House Quay for local dentist, Dr Robin Foyle.

For ease of construction, it was decided to build the surgery at the rear of the old building rather than attempting to alter the older building.

However as all this area is formed on infilled ground, this left us with a decision as to what type of foundations. The foundations couldn’t be normal strip foundations due to the weakness of the underlying soil. Accordingly a decision was made to build the surgery off a reinforced concrete raft foundation. This was further reinforced with perimeter walls and the surgery was build up off these walls raising the building above flood levels.

Raft foundations have an added advantage over traditional build in that they involve less disturbance to the underlying soil and can be useful if there is a risk of archaeological material being encountered.