Outside the Box: Combining Geotechnical and Contaminated Sites Investigations

In our experience, the geosciences industry often practices as two very separate houses:

1. Geotechnical
2. Environmental (contaminated sites)

Practitioners specialize in one area with a common aversion to the other. This walled off approach provides operational simplicity by limiting the skillset necessary to perform field investigations, but it creates inefficiencies requiring duplicated mobilizations or additional personnel on project sites to meet scope.

Over the past decade, R&M has strived (and sometimes struggled) to combine geotechnical and contaminated sites field efforts where appropriate. This allows us to maximize budgets, optimize time, increase awareness of each technical field for our team members and better integrate recommendations for both disciplines with civil engineering teams.

Maximizing Budget and Time Efficiency

Subsurface investigations are costly and require schedules that are extremely difficult to maintain. It takes significant time and effort to collect meaningful data from even modest depths beneath the ground surface and to analyze and make sense of the data collected. In Alaska, these cost realities are often amplified with the often-remote nature of infrastructure design, construction and maintenance we support.

To address these challenges, our best plans meet Alaskan logistical, schedule and weather challenges that conspire to make an otherwise simple project difficult. Our geotechnical and contaminated sites experts know how to address the challenges unique to each project and strive to provide the best product possible for a given scope and budget.

When projects call for both services, the easy route is to simply have separate field efforts so neither adjusts methods for the other. At best, there is shared mobilization to limit costs associated with moving equipment. R&M has challenged ourselves to combine geotechnical and contaminated sites investigations on projects where both are necessary. Our field personnel are cross-trained to support each service line. This allows them to conduct concurrent sample collection for each subsurface investigation, minimizing labor and travel expenses. When it makes sense on larger or more complex projects, we can also send multiple people to maintain operational tempo, allowing them to mutually support each other’s field tasks. The result is a more efficient use of time and resources without compromising technical rigor.

Technical Awareness

Many of our recent projects have required us to evaluate the geotechnical needs of rehabilitating or reconstructing airport traffic surface embankments. Concurrently, we were tasked with determining if contamination existed in the area from past land use and if it would affect construction.

These concurrent needs created opportunities for collaboration that extend beyond fieldwork. Joint planning efforts resulted in our senior technical experts being aware of each investigation, using shared data that transferred through to the analysis and report project phases. Our geotechnical engineers discussed potential effects a design change would have on contaminated site regulatory requirements, while our environmental professionals discussed proposed solutions to deal with contaminated materials with geotechnical engineers. This shared understanding creates innovative solutions that are not conventional from either practice’s perspective, but are far more cost efficient when taken in aggregate.

An Integrated Approach Delivers Better Results

In a vacuum, a geotechnical engineer would recommend the most cost-efficient design recommendations, without accounting for contaminated site regulations. The environmental professionals would recommend a solution to deal with the regulatory requirements of contaminated materials identified, without assessing how the geotechnical recommendations would be affected. With the two disciplines working together through planning and field processes, we adjust recommendations to work with each other to meet geotechnical needs. This supports the infrastructure, while minimizing the cost impacts of dealing with contaminated materials. With this integrated approach, R&M provides more efficient, comprehensive approaches to best assist the civil engineering and client teams designing Alaska’s infrastructure projects.

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Services Mentioned

Geotechnical

Contaminated Sites