Geophysical survey: For effective engineering designs and problem resolution

With the growing concerns over health and safety issues, today it has become extremely important to find reliable survey services that guarantee the most accurate and highest quality survey data as well as ensuring cost and time efficiency. Given that the maximum portion of engineering designs are made using this survey data, many different survey methods may need to be undertaken to make effective choices in designing. To assess the suitability of a land for construction purposes it is important and necessary to characterise landscape features.

Geophysical survey is one such technique that can help unearth a lot of problems as well as solutions. It is essential to identify various structures below the ground including air voids and cavities, water fronts, buried historic sites, buried mine shafts, and buried fuel tanks, air raid shelters and Unexploded Ordinance (UXO). This technique can also be used for strength assessment of existing foundations and finding the location for new foundations.

UXO surveys are found to be highly effective at discovering hidden items which have the potential to create a lot of problems in terms of life and cost at a later stage. The identification and location of these objects are particularly relevant and extremely essential at the design or construction stage so that proper precautions and care can be taken to either avoid any problems or subvert them somehow.

It is important to find the existence of buried vaults, crypts, sewers, and heating ducts below the ground before commencing any work because they can lead to voiding during the construction phase or create problems beneath the existing buildings. Hence, void detection and resolution is extremely important and its importance cannot be undermined.

Sometimes, variations in the electrical resistivity of the ground also need to be measured. For this purpose, resistivity imaging is used. This method involves applying small electric currents across arrays of ground electrodes, providing detailed information on subsurface ground condition, including the thickness and resistivity of subsurface electrical layers. Transitional boundaries, which are very difficult to detect through other geophysical methods, can be easily defined using this method.

Engaging the services of professional surveyors is highly recommended to ensure minimum loss of life, time, and money in the long run. These surveys help in detecting risks associated with a certain construction ground and enable engineers to resolve them by finding the optimum solutions. This is therefore a big step towards better designing and property management.