Almost all manmade structures are supported by the ground (buildings, bridges, roads) or built underground (tunnels, utility networks). In order to design and build a durable, economical and safe structure, it is necessary to know the properties of the soil underneath the structure or in the environment of the structure.

Soil information

The purpose of geotechnical soil investigations is to obtain data on the soil, groundwater and other underground factors affecting the construction site.

Reaalprojekt carries out geotechnical soil investigations for the construction or renovation of roads, railways, buildings, industrial buildings and utility networks. In addition, we take samples of soil and groundwater to determine whether pollution exists and perform soil and rock drilling works for several other purposes – drilling works related to natural resource exploration, drilling of vertical technological holes, drilling of holes for foundations, etc.

Which method to choose?

A number of methods have been developed for conducting geotechnical soil investigations. Which survey method to use depends mainly on the kinds of data needed for a particular building and the characteristics of the soil at the construction site.

Laws and standards

Reaalprojekt is guided by the laws and regulations in force in Estonia (Building Act, Planning Act, Procedure for Performing Geotehnical Site Investigations and others acts) and guidelines and standards (EVS-EN 1997, Guidelines for the Design of Elastic Pavements, the Road Administration’s instructions for geotechnical investigations, etc.).

Hardware and software

For geotechnical soil investigations, we use modern field research equipment and methods:

• multifunctional geotechnical machinery Geomachine GM 65 GTT and Geomachine GM 100 GT and a URB2A2 drilling rig
• drilling equipment for different types of drilling (twist and core drilling, screw drilling, friction drilling) and soil sampling
• equipment for different types of penetration tests (DPSH-A, CPTU and DPL)
• impeller soil test rig to determine the strength properties of weak soils
• hand drilling equipment (Cobra, Eijkelkamp) for drilling wells and sampling in hard-to-reach places
• pumping equipment for filtration tests, equipment for taking groundwater samples for analysis of pollution
• Garmin and Trimble GPS devices for setting out survey points and a Topcon laser level for surveying elevation
• Civil 3D combined with AutoCAD for processing survey data and formatting reports.