Site Engineering
Building constructions on roads, railways or water barriers and preparing a site for construction on soft soils is accompanied by risks to the earthworks themselves and for the surroundings in which the earthworks are carried out.
These risks can lead to unforeseen deformations and even the underground collapsing, and amongst other things are the result of uncertain elements in the properties or composition of the underground and the calculation models applied for the design.
In practice, the behaviour of the underground will therefore deviate in either a positive or negative sense from what was predicted in the design.
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The risks during execution can be subdivided as follows:
- Deviations from the principles of the design that affect the planning of the execution, such as:
- Rate at which the soil construction is raised
- Residual settlement after final acceptance of the project
- An undesirable impact on the surroundings
With site engineering, the aforementioned risks can be made manageable and kept within acceptable limits.
Site engineering entails measuring and monitoring the actual behaviour of the soil (settlement, horizontal deformation and pore pressure) during the execution phase (see monitoring) and then analysing the measurements.
We can offer the following services prior to the execution phase of your project:
- Drawing up a report of the geotechnical starting points, testing and where necessary optimising existing geotechnical starting points (used to draw up the final design)
- Drawing up a design for the construction phase (testing the residual settlement, determining the embankment speed, determining the impact on the surroundings, etc.)
- Where necessary, carrying out additional technical soil investigations and lab tests to draw up a reliable design for the construction phase
- Drawing up a monitoring plan
We can offer the following services during the execution phase of your project:
- Installing and reading out measuring instruments to monitor behaviour under the ground during the construction phase:
- Pore pressure meters (manual and automatic measurement).
- Clinometers (manual and automatic (SAAF) measurement).
- Automatic settlement rods.
- Geotechnical support during construction / site engineering on the basis of data measured during the construction phase (approval of embankment layers, testing the residual settlement requirement / approval of residual settlement, monitoring the impact on the surroundings, etc.).
- Geotechnical material testing (determining the erosion-resistance category of clay, compaction test of clay and sand, testing the RAW requirements of sand, etc.).
Examples of projects where SOCOTEC offered successful site engineering:
- Improvement of flood defences at Drontermeerdijk (Boskalis)
- Improvement of the flood defences in the Eemdijken Zuid region (contractors’ consortium Dijkencombi)
- Preparing sites:
- Thiendenland II in Schoonhoven for housing (contractor: Vissers Ploegmakers).
- Zevender industrial estate in Schoonhoven (contractor: Vissers Ploegmakers).
- Oudeland industrial estate in Berkel en Rodenrijs (Lansingerland local council).
