Ground improvement/grouting/dredging

Due to the rapid increase in population, industrial and construction boom especially in the urban as well as coastal regions of many countries have considerably intensified the inevitable need for infrastructure development on problematic soils including soft compressible clays, deposits with low bearing capacities, soils prone to erosion and collapse upon wetting, highly fractured and jointed rock mass among other geological deposits. Good quality geologic materials for construction are also becoming scarce, exacerbated by numerous environmental constraints in various countries. Due to these reasons and environmental restrictions on certain public works, ground improvement has now become an integrated and essential component of infrastructure development. Consequently, civil engineers are forced to utilize even the softest and weakest of natural deposits for foundations, and therefore, the application of ground improvement techniques including preloading and consolidation, static and dynamic compaction, grouting and chemical treatment, subsurface drainage and dewatering, vacuum consolidation, among other methods have now become common practice in heavy construction.