Many structures across the UK have reached their design life and as such are undergoing refurbishments which could add to or change the load transferred to the foundations. Empirical can provide innovative and traditional methods to determine foundation details:

• Ground Penetrating Radar Surveys (GPR) to locate buried foundation elements such as pile caps, ground beams, width of strips etc.

• Intrusive diamond core drilling to confirm findings from GPR surveys, and/or confirm element depths.

• Excavations to expose foundation details. This includes saw/diamond cutting of ground slabs, excavations to expose foundation elements and use of temporary supports where required.

• Materials testing of foundations i.e., extraction of concrete cores for compressive strength testing, sulphate content determination etc.

• Accurate recording of details exposed.

In many instances the construction details of existing buildings are unknown. Empirical provide experienced investigation engineers to determine types of foundations and methodologies to gather accurate information required towards assessment calculations.