An emergency enquiry that arrives with the right information gets a useful answer back the same day. One that arrives as a description of a problem takes a round of questions first, and that round costs a day you do not have.
This is the list. Six items get a real answer; the rest can follow.
The six that matter
1. Photographs
The single most useful thing, and the easiest to send.
- From several angles, including from the water or downstream looking back at the damage if it is safe to get there
- With something for scale — a person at a safe distance, a machine, a rod
- Wide and close. Wide shows the setting and the access; close shows the damage
- The access route, which determines what plant can reach the work
Video walking the site is better than nothing and often better than stills.
2. Approximate size of the problem
Estimates are fine. Precision is not expected in an emergency.
- Length of bank, embankment, or structure affected
- Depth of the hole or the vertical extent of the loss
- Width of the affected zone
- Water depth at the work, roughly
- Whether the damage is still progressing
A rod pushed into the bed tells you more than looking does, and the distinction between undisturbed bed and loose infill matters — see post-flood scour inspection.
3. What plant can reach the work
This constrains the answer more than anything else.
- What machine is available — excavator size, crane, loader
- Where it can stand, and whether that ground is sound
- Reach required from the standing position to the work
- Whether access is from above, from the bank, from the water, or from a barge
- Headroom, if working under a structure
A site that can only take a small machine gets a different answer from one with open access, regardless of the hydraulics.
4. Fill stone availability
The model depends on filling locally.
- Is there a quarry or stone supplier near the site?
- Can they deliver at short notice, including out of hours?
- Are they operating — a supplier flooded by the same event is not a source
- What gradation can they produce?
If the answer is that no local stone is available, say so early, because it changes the whole approach.
5. Water conditions
- Rising, peaked, or falling? This decides whether to intervene now at all — see placing armor at flood stage
- Approximate velocity, even as a description
- Tidal? If so, the workable window each day
- Forecast, including anything further upstream
6. Where to ship, and who receives
- Delivery address and whether a truck can actually reach it
- Offloading capability at that address
- Contact on site, with a mobile number
- Hours the site can receive
Useful, but can follow
- Structure geometry — bridge opening, abutment type, embankment slope
- Any existing scour evaluation or inspection report
- As-built or design drawings
- Survey or soundings, existing or historic
- Which agencies have been notified, and whether any emergency authorisation is in place
- Whether the asset is open or closed
- Whether there is any prospect of the work remaining permanently — see can emergency work become permanent?
What you get back
With the six items:
- A size recommendation for the conditions described
- An approximate quantity for the extent given
- A layout approach — how the units are arranged for this geometry
- Stock position and shipping, including what can move today
- An honest read on whether this is the right product, which sometimes means telling you it is not
That last one matters. If the mechanism is a stability failure rather than erosion, or the loading is beyond what our data supports, the useful answer is to say so quickly rather than to ship. When not to use rock bags is the standing version of that.
Two things worth knowing about lead time
Bags ship from stock and fill on arrival. The two longest items in most emergency responses — manufacturing and hauling heavy material — are removed. What remains is transit and mobilisation.
Pre-positioned stock removes transit too. An agency holding stock at a yard is starting from mobilisation. See pre-positioning emergency stock.
How to make contact
For an active emergency, call. A form is the wrong tool when the answer is needed in hours; the number is on the contact page.
Send the photographs by email or message while you are on the phone. Being able to look at the site while you describe it removes most of the questions.
For anything not actively failing, the quote form is fine and gets a response within one business day.
Where to go next
- Emergency scour repair: the first 48 hours
- Pre-positioning emergency stock
- Documenting emergency work for claims
- Emergency permitting
- Emergency response for how a job is scoped and shipped
- The emergency hub for the rest