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Plate Bearing Testing

To meet the needs of the increasing demand for offsite construction for modular structures, highlighted by the government’s awarding of £3bn modular schools framework, we have invested in another set of fully accredited plate bearing testing equipment for assessing the suitability of temporary foundations or siting crane outriggers.
 
Of course, for those larger projects, we can offer full geo-environmental investigations, topographic surveys, utility surveys, laboratory testing, infiltration testing and CBR testing, all using our own equipment.

For more information, please contact Steven Partridge – 01296 739413

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Under Pressure

We do a lot of plate bearing and CBR tests every year. We can generally complete up to ten in a day, depending on ground conditions; softer ground takes longer to test. Our test kit is fully calibrated and we can provide you with results on the day of testing. If you’d like to know more then please contact Steven Partridge – 01296 739413.

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Back to School

We were recently appointed to complete Geo-Environmental Investigations at two new school sites, to be constructed using the latest modular construction methods.

Our investigation involved 100m of linear drilling, environmental and geotechnical laboratory testing, over 50m of dynamic probing, soakaway testing, trial pits, CBR tests, Plate Bearing Tests, Topographic surveys, CCTV surveys and utility surveys. All the site works were completed within 3 days and reports issued within 2 weeks.
Surely that gets an A*!

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Accuracy v Precision

We live in an age dominated by IT and its ability to crunch data. Without doubt this can yield significant benefits, but do we sometimes lose sight of reality as a result?

We were recently asked by a regulator to supply CBR results to two decimal places. Now, we can calculate data to any number of decimal places using the IT tools available to us, but just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Anyone familaiar with CBR testing will know that the test just isn’t that accurate. Quoting a CBR result to the nearest 0.1% might (just) be realistic for soft/loose materials. But quoting a result to the nearest 0.01% implies an accuracy that just isn’t warranted. The precision of the answer isn’t justified by the accuracy of the test.

So this is a plea for regulators (and anyone else for that matter) to apply a little common sense, and to remember the difference between accuracy and precision.

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What Do You Do on a Cold, Wet Saturday?

When one of our clients rang late in the week to ask if we could carry out some CBR testing on a motorway hard shoulder the next Saturday we should have checked the weather forecast before saying yes. Saturday saw high winds and torrential rain – but more importantly for our client, it also saw us complete the required CBR testing despite the weather conditions. Just for good measure we also carried out some Mackintosh probing at no additional cost.

Contract value <£1k

If you need CBR testing, Plate Bearing testing, dynamic probing or pile probing then please contact Duncan Eastland (Tel: 01296 739431).