soil placed without records of any compaction effort. As such,
there can be little reliance on any real engineering properties
to this type of soil, making it difficult to build on.
Many of these fill sites exhibit very low soil strength and
contain thick deposits of organic soils, which can be very
problematic to the bottom line of a development project. An
example of this type of challenging soil profile is the eastern
Waterfront of Toronto, also known as the Port Lands, which
is reclaimed land. The soil there is a melange of fill including
very thick organic zones, placed there starting in the late
19th century.
A traditional method to deal with bad soil is to simply
remove it and replace it with good soil. Movement of soil from
site to site creates a massive regulatory burden and major
time and effort are expended on the details and paperwork
related to excess soil management. A major reason piles are
chosen for these sites is that it becomes possible to leave the
poor soils in place.
As Tigchelaar explains, there have been major gains in the
field of ground improvement and there are now solutions
TECHNICAL
A staggering 80 per cent of
work that GeoSolv takes on
involves some amount of
undocumented fill.
72 Q4 2018 www.pilingcanada.ca
/www.pilingcanada.ca
