When you want to construct any building, you must ensure that you have all of the required permits before building work can start. You must have had the building design approved by the local authorities. The building must be in the right place, and the work must not be adversely affecting your neighbourhood. Building regulations will also check that you are using approved building materials and that all work on the site is safe. One area that you may not have thought about is the soil on your site. You might think that all soil is similar and the soil isn't going to impact your design, but that isn't true. To see how the soil on your site could affect your design, you must work with a geotechnical engineer.

Why is soil important?

Every building will either be on the soil, in the soil or perhaps made of soil. It is the job of the geotechnical engineer to determine how the soil will interact with your building. A geotechnical engineer will be a specialist in soil mechanics, and they will have studied how soils behave in specific environments. They will take samples from across the whole site and analyse the samples to determine the soil characteristics. After identifying how strong the soil is, they will work with other engineers in your team to create a foundation for your building that will be both strong and stable.

Why else might you need a geotechnical engineer?

Analysing soil strength isn't the only role that a geotechnical engineer might assume. A geotechnical engineer understands all aspects of soil and will be ideally suited to advise you on possible contamination anywhere on the site and explain how you could carry out whatever remediation efforts might be necessary. Apart from contamination and poor-quality soil, other issues can arise as building work progresses. If the area where you are working has been occupied before, there could be dangerous relics hiding below the ground, such as long-forgotten storage tanks or rusting lead pipework left behind when the site was abandoned. A geotechnical engineer could survey the area and identify whatever hazards may exist. If they don't find any man-made hazards in the ground, they might detect natural phenomena such as caves that could cause problems with the building foundation.

To learn more about why it is best to include a geotechnical engineer in your team, give one a call today.