Geotechnical Baseline Reports – ground models you can just make up?

Geotechnical Baseline Reports (GBRs) are a purely commercial form of ground model, used to allocate ownership of unforeseen ground risk in a construction contract. They are used at tender to provide a common basis for pricing risk and they are used during construction to provide an efficient means of managing claims involving potentially unforeseen ground conditions. One of the ways in which GBRs are different from conventional ground models is that they do not necessarily have to present objective data-based truths about the ground. This possibility arises because clients have varying appetites and abilities to take on construction risk. GBRs can be difficult to write because they are focused on encounters with the ground during construction and these experiences are often indirect and significantly different to encounters in ground investigations. This construction knowledge and the commercial nature of GBRs mean a multi-disciplinary approach to writing GBRs is preferred. The profession best able to characterize the risk inherent in the ground is the engineering geologist through knowledge of ground models. GBR ground models can be considered to be a distinct commercial variant and development of the engineering ground models described in the IAEG's CS25 report on the subject.Thematic collection: This article is part of the Ground models in engineering geology and hydrogeology collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/Ground-models-in-engineering-geology-and-hydrogeology

About this title - Geological Hazards in the UK: Their Occurrence, Monitoring and Mitigation – Engineering Group Working Party Report

The UK is perhaps unique globally in that it presents the full spectrum of geological time, stratigraphy and associated lithologies within its boundaries. With this wide range of geological assemblages comes a wide range of geological hazards, whether they be geophysical (earthquakes, effects of volcanic eruptions, tsunami, landslides), geotechnical (collapsible, compressible, liquefiable, shearing, swelling and shrinking soils), geochemical (dissolution, radon and methane gas hazards) or georesource related (coal, chalk and other mineral extraction). An awareness of these hazards and the risks that they pose is a key requirement of the engineering geologist.The Geological Society considered that a Working Party Report would help to put the study and assessment of geohazards into the wider social context, helping the engineering geologist to better communicate the issues concerning geohazards in the UK to the client and the public. This volume sets out to define and explain these geohazards, to detail their detection, monitoring and management and to provide a basis for further research and understanding.

Chapter 1 Introduction to Geological Hazards in the UK: Their Occurrence, Monitoring and Mitigation

The UK is perhaps unique globally in that it presents the full spectrum of geological time, stratigraphy and associated lithologies within its boundaries. With this wide range of geological assemblages comes a wide range of geological hazards, whether geophysical (earthquakes, effects of volcanic eruptions, tsunami, landslides), geotechnical (collapsible, compressible, liquefiable, shearing, swelling and shrinking soils), geochemical (dissolution, radon and methane gas hazards) or related to georesources (coal, chalk and other mineral extraction). An awareness of these hazards and the risks that they pose is a key requirement of the engineering geologist. This volume sets out to define and explain these geohazards, to detail their detection, monitoring and management, and to provide a basis for further research and understanding, all within a UK context.

Integration of Resistivity and Seismic Data to Determine the Cavity at Teluk Apau, Langkawi: An Evaluation

A geo-environmental evaluation to build and maintain the transmission tower often requires a large amount of spatial information to determine foundation and slope stability. Geo-electrical or resistivity measurements are capable of managing large amounts of spatially related information, enabling various layers of data to be integrated.These geophysical methods are readily available can assist engineering geologist and geotechnical engineers in obtaining the material properties and boundaries of sub-surface materials.Multi-criteria analyses are carried out to assess the development suitability of the transmission tower's geo-environment based on properly measured and weighted variables. It is demonstrated that Geoelectrical or resistivity measurements have high functionality for geo-environmental assessments.

Contribution to Estimating Bearing Capacity of Pile in Clayey Soils

The estimation of real geotechnical parameters is key factor for safe and economic design of geotechnical structures. One of these are pile foundations, which require proper design and evaluation due to accessing more deep foundation soil and because remediation work of not bearable piles or broken piles is a crucial operation. For this reason, geotechnical field testing like cone penetration test (CPT), standard penetration (SPT) or dynamic penetration test (DP) are realized in order to receive continuous information about soil strata. Comparing with rotary core drilling type of survey with sampling, these methods are more progressive. From engineering geologist point of view, it is more important to know geological characterization of locality but geotechnical engineers have more interest above the real geotechnical parameters of foundation soils. The role of engineering geologist cannot be underestimated because important geological processes in origin or during history can explain behaviour of a geological environment. In effort to streamline the survey, investigation by penetration tests is done as it is able to provide enough information for designers. This paper deals with actual trends in pile foundation design; because there are no new standards and usable standards are very old. Estimation of the bearing capacity of a single pile can be demonstrated on the example of determination of the cone factor Nk from CPT testing. Then results were compared with other common methods.

Geotechnics in the promotion of dimension stone

Changes in the supply and use of dimension stone have extensively modified the approach of the engineering geologist to stone technology. Traditional expertise requirements have moved from exploration, extraction, and processing to quality control and application. Reasons for this are the globalisation of dimension stone supplies from new and unknown sources; deterioration of environmental conditions; cost saving in using thin stone tiles or slabs as veneer; at times hazardous; incorrect cladding applications, and the assessment of weathering. All these require the knowledge and experience of the engineering geologist, whose skills are not commonly known. Promotion, assisted in the media by exposure of global hazards has drawn attention to the discipline and practices. Research on the physical and mechanical stone properties has at last been taken up by major intergovernmental organisations. Large budgets are devoted to take stone testing out of century old routine."High tech" facilities are now applied to make stone-related evaluations more objective and independent of the human factor. Acceptance criteria of testing results require rationalisation. Geotechnical knowledge is important to keep test results within economic restraints and timetables. This is of special importance when linking such factors to environmental planning and control of quarrying and subsequent rehabilitation of the workings. In this paper a bird's eye view of the problems related to dimension stones is provided. Some examples of research trends are also given to exhibit the state-of-the-art.