Category Archives: Geotechnics

NEWS ON NEW GEOTECHNICAL STANDARDS

For those interested in geotechnics we thought you may wish to know (if you weren’t aware already) that a suite of updates to the current British Standards have been published:

  • BS EN ISO 10319: 2015 Geosynthetics. Wide-width tensile test.
  • BS EN 14199: 2015 Execution of special geotechnical works. Micropiles.
  • BS EN ISO 18674-1:2015 Geotechnical investigation and testing. Geotechnical monitoring by field instrumentation. General rules.
  • PD CEN/TS 16660:2015 Characterisation of waste. Leaching behaviour test. Determination of the reducing character and the reducing capacity.

Readers are referred to the BSI for further details about the standards.

SLOPE APPRAISAL SERVICES CONTINUE TO DEVELOP…..

Surepath has been commissioned to undertake a range of slope stability assessments across the UK recently by several different Clients. Though details are subject to confidentiality restrictions, the projects illustrate the breadth of expertise available to Clients generally. For example:

  • One project requires the appraisal of an existing road embankment over a culvert. It requires the integrated appraisal of the site, planned highway improvements and vegetation effects, with the aim being to secure adoption of the highway in due course.
  • At another site excavation works at a hard-rock quarry are potentially impacting on adjacent infrastructure. We are assisting the Client to appraise the effects.
  • At a third site, complex superficial geological conditions and flooding concerns have lead to design issues that we are helping to address in a review role.

We hope to be able to showcase these and other projects in more detail in due course.

SPECIALIST GEOTECHNICAL SERVICES TO LITHOS CONSULTING

Surepath Consulting is pleased to announce that it has established a collaborative relationship with Lithos Consulting to provide them with specialist geotechnical design and appraisal services on a call-off basis to supplement their in-house expertise in ground investigation, interpretative report writing and other matters geotechnical. We have bid for several projects together already, and current commissions mainly comprise soil and rock slope stability assessments. We are looking forward to working with them going forward and to many future joint bid successes.

FOUNDER MEMBER OF THE VISION DESIGN ALLIANCE

Surepath Consulting is pleased to announce that it is one of the founder members of the Vision Design Alliance, a group of small to medium sized companies in the East Midlands region that have come together to offer a one-stop shop of civil engineering, building and construction related consultancy services. Our collective goal is to provide Clients with access to a network of specialists who are used to working together collaboratively to provide an integrated service based on expertise, innovation and enthusiasm. Further news on the launch of the VDA and its web site will follow soon.

‘CRUSHED BRICKS’ PAPER SUCCESS….

We are pleased to confirm that the final version of a paper by our Dr Andy Goodwin and colleagues has just been accepted for publication later this year in the Proceedings of the ICE – Construction Materials.  Titled “Use of crushed brick in reinforced earth railway structures”, it draws together expertise of Mott MacDonald (Simon Ellis & Dr Chris Hurst), Sheffield Hallam University (Prof Liz Laycock) and Surepath to look at the innovative use of crushed bricks as engineered fill within railway embankments.

This paper follows up Andy’s success in having another paper accepted for publication in the proceedings of the XVI European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering in Edinburgh in September 2015.  That paper was the result of our support to URS (now AECOM) in the design of a coastal protection scheme.  Titled “The design of an anchored pile retaining structure to control landslide regression at Lyme Regis, UK”, the authors are Corrado Candian (URS), our Andy Goodwin, and Dimitri Daskalopoulos (URS).

We are very pleased to have worked with our partners on these papers, and look forward to further successes in the future!