GROUND Engineering designs over 100,000 square feet of wall facing areas each year. GROUND's past RETAINING WALL DESIGN project experience and highlights include: Design and testing of a 35-foot high MSE/gravity combination rock wall Design and construction oversight of a 90-foot high soil nail sheet pile wall QA testing for a 47k square foot / 770 anchor tieback wall Engineering & materials testing for a 80k+ square foot MSE and soil nail wall.

Our geotechnical engineering services include the following:

• Drilling & Subsurface Exploration
• Foundation Design Recommendations
• Pavement Design
• Rock Slope Engineering
• Settlement Analysis
• Retaining Wall Design
• Slope Stability
• Geophysical Exploration
• Failure Analysis
• Instrumentation and Seismic Studies

Drilling& Subsurface Exploration

GROUND has performed thousands of subsurface investigations and has expertise with:

• Shallow exploration to obtain bulk samples for pavement designs, borrow investigations and potential on-site select material availability
• Solid stem and hollow stem auger drilling and sampling, mud and rotary drilling coring and air hammer drilling equipment
• Drilling and sampling with hand-auger equipment, portable mobile drills, skid rigs, all-terrain track mounted rigs and 4-wheel drive drill rigs
• Vertical, horizontal and angled drill holes
• Split-spoon samplers, California liner samplers; Shelby tube samples and NX wireline core samples
• Seismic Exploration
• Test pits, test borings and core logs are presented visually using AutoCAD

Foundation Design Recommendations

• Foundations include spread, continuous or pad footings, mats or rafts, post-tensioned slabs, drilled caissons, helical piers, compacted aggregate piers, micro piles and driven piles
• Laterally loaded pile or caisson analysis

Rock Slope Engineering

• Jointing and fracturing
• Bedding and joint orientation
• Joint alternation, strength
• Rock types, RQD and percent recovery data
• Rock slope analysis
• Bore hole cameras/sonic analysis

Settlement Analysis

• Provide settlement investigations and analysis with respect to performance on heavily loaded foundation structures, deep fills associated with commercial developments, roadway embankments and drainage structures
• Provide recommendations fo foundation improvements or settlement mitigation

Retaining Wall Design

• Mechanically stabilized earth walls, soil nail walls, tieback anchor walls, soldier pile walls incorporated with different types of wall facing materials,sheet pile walls, caisson walls, wire basket walls, gravity rock walls, combination walls

Slope Stability

• Analyze potentially or existing unstable slopes, existing landslide areas using a detailed drilling program, laboratory-testing program, stability analysis and geotechnical analysis
• Analyze in-situ measurements of soil and rock behavior via instrumentation such as pressure-meters, piezometers, inclinometers, transducers, resistivity meters and deflection measuring devices
• Provide recommendations for slope stabilization or propose slope construction

Geophysical Exploration

• Seismic hazard estimates via gravity and magnetic surveys and crystal-scale refraction surveys
• Embankment evaluations and ripability studies
• Assessment of subsurface voids, faults, bedrock topography and groundwater conduits and contamination, mining and construction impacts

Pavement Design

• Arterials, collectors, local streets, parking areas, runways
• AASHTO, FAA, CDOT, MGPEC, individual municipality design procedures
• New pavement or rehabilitation for flexible or rigid pavement sections
• Pavement management program
• Asphalt and concrete mix designs
• Pavement subgrade improvements/stabilization

Failure Analysis

GROUND provides investigation and consultation services, plus expertise in failure analysis and expert witness consultation. GROUND can provide:

• Distress evaluation for buildings, foundations, floor slabs, retaining walls, and dams
• Pavement distress evaluation and repair recommendations
• Shoring design, slope failure analysis, monitoring and remediation
• Rock fall analysis and mitigation