AWARD WINNING PROJECT!!

                                             Instrumentation                  Ground Investigation            Laboratory Testing

Highways Slope Remediation using Fibre-reinforced Soil

A project in which Geotechnical Observations played a significant part has won the Ground Engineering Award for 2010 in the category "Projects under £1M." The project is a research project run by Mouchel and the Highways Agency to investigate the use of waste fibres to inhibit desiccation cracking caused by shrinkage and swelling in high plasticity clays. This is a significant problem on cut slopes and is a major cause of water ingress and shallow seated instability. GeO installed inclinometers, extensometers and flushable piezometers into a cut slope on the A1(M) to the north of London. Three sections of slope were instrumented, the first was a section that had no immediate signs of instability and the other two were sections that were repaired with varying quantities of fibres. GeO was also involved in undertaking trial pitting to identify changes in the structure of the clay and the depth of shear surfaces and laboratory tests to investigate the shrinkage behaviour of the fibre-reinforced soil.

The judges said: "This is a classic British geotechnical research project. Potentially this technique could have huge benefits for the whole geotechnical community in the future. This is a really significant piece of fieldwork and research, and it's nice to see that some serious money in being invested in large-scale innovative research."

Forthcoming events:

Geotechnical Observations will be at the following events:

Geotechnical Instrumentation for Monitoring Field Performance - Deltares, Delft. 7th -9th September 2010.

Basements and Underground Construction - venue to be confirmed. 6th October 2010.

Slope Engineering - venue to be confirmed. 16th November 2010.

Tunnelling - venue to be confirmed. 1st December 2010.

Instrumentation and Monitoring - venue to be confirmed. March 2011.

Come and see us!

Job Opportunities

We are recruiting again. Sustained growth has opened up further employment opportunities with us. If you would like to be involved in exciting projects such as those shown on our projects page, then get in touch as soon as possible. Experience in the installation and monitoring of geotechnical instrumentation would be a distinct advantage and you must have a full clean UK driving licence.  Please forward your CV to Dr Andrew Ridley.

Geotechnical Observations Limited
The Peter Vaughan Building
9 Avro Way, Brooklands, Weybridge
Surrey, KT13 0YF, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1932 352040
Fax: +44 (0)1932 356375
Email: info@geo-observations.com
Web: www.geo-observations.com