Ground Investigation

Site specific ground investigation reduces the geotechnical risks that ground conditions can pose to any construction project.

What is ground investigation?

Ground investigation is an intrusive investigation required to establish and determine various engineering properties of soils and rocks for geotechnical and environmental purposes.

These engineering properties are then used to establish design parameters for foundation and substructure design.

Information gathered during the investigation combined with historical data provides information regarding subsurface contamination and features within the soil profile. This allows clients the opportunity to address design, planning and land purchase quandaries and/or avoid previously unrecognised risks. This is all reported prior to incurring avoidable costs, making it an invaluable aspect of project design.

In May 2020, Strata Geotechnics was appointed to National Highways ground investigation framework.

Our ground investigation specialists, Strata Geotechnics, have expertise in drilling, sampling, analysing and reporting ground information to support follow-on design and construction activities.

Strata are members of the British Drilling Association (BDA) and the Association of Geotechnical Specialists (AGS), with all drillers trained to NVQ Level 2 in land drilling.

Strata’s unique Vetrak® rig provides the access capabilities of a window sampler with the drilling capability of a cable percussion rig.

The mast is extremely quick to erect, doesn’t require disassembly to be tracked to the next drill location on the same site and its access capabilities are unrivalled, being small enough to track through an internal doorway.

Our ground investigation specialists, Strata Geotechnics, offer a wide range of professional ground investigation and monitoring services including:

  • Cable percussion drilling
  • Rotary open hole coring & drilling
  • Dynamic (window) sampling
  • Engineering data and reporting

What are the advantages of ground investigation?

  • Limits the risk of unexpected ground conditions during project development
  • Mitigates future cost implication and time delays to projects
  • Minimises safety risks to site workers and the public

Common uses:

  • Used to satisfy clients requirements and regulatory requirements
  • Obtaining information and soil parameters of the ground conditions
  • Allows safe and economic designs to be developed
  • Reduces the impact of unforeseen conditions

Why Van Elle?

We provide customers with a differentiated and highly professional service, including:

  • Integrated capability – an end-to-end service from ground investigation to the largest types of foundation engineering
  • The UK’s largest fleet of specialist rigs
  • A dedicated team – we deploy a directly employed workforce of more than 400 highly trained operatives
  • Innovation – we invest 10% of our expenditure in developing new techniques and applications
  • Expertise – we provide more than 25 geotechnical, ground improvement and piling techniques across the Group