Geotechnical Investigations

ENC Testing Inc. provides pre-construction evaluations of site soils for all manner of projects; structures, subdivisions, environmental containment of water, sewage lagoons, buildings, pavements and related facilities.

ENC provides geotechnical investigations and geotechnical engineering utilizing GeoProbe MacroCore and Cone Penetration technology.

MacroCore and Cone Penetration provide superior information at competitive dollars. Improved information implies potentially higher bearing values, and lower construction costs, while maintaining an adequate and better-known factor of safety.

Main benefits of geotechnical investigations utilizing these technologies are:

• Less turnaround time, Alberta-One-Call to completed report, as short as next day for simple reports, typically less than one week.


• Better definition of shallow soil changes, fill, and topsoil depth.


• Ground water table is initially measured with a dissipation test, on site at the end of the cone penetration test procedure, with no standing time. A standpipe is installed, for post report measurements.


• The soil strength is measured, not estimated as with conventional equipment. This allows for potential higher bearing values, tempered by engineering judgments, potentially reducing construction costs.

MacroCore removes a low disturbance uncontaminated soil core continuously from the surface to the bottom of the test location within the soils. This allows routine clear definition of the soil profile, topsoil, fill, A, B, and C-horizons. Saturation, capillary rise, evaporite, partial saturation, and surface effected zones are often visible. Soil mass structure is visible from the surface down; hence, the geology of the foundation strata is often apparent. This allows for better estimates of the settlement potential of any foundation, in addition to other soil parameters. Portions of the core may further be tested for moisture, plasticity, unit weight, and even compressive strength. Even a good estimate of the unit weight of sand is available. Discrete samples of up to 1.2 metres in length can be obtained.

Traditional moisture contents, Atterberg limits, and sulphate tests can be conducted on the recovered samples.

Cone Penetration Testing provides a good measurement of the soil strength and pore pressures, in place and with little disturbance, at a fraction of the previous cost. This allows design of foundations with confidence in the soil values and; hence, the design capacity. All this is made practical by computer technology applied to geotechnology.

With a good estimation of the foundation load and settlement characteristics, it will be generally possible to optimize the foundation cost, all for better outcome of your projects. Superior information allows for better defined bearing values; hence, reducing the factor of ignorance utilized in the selection of the recommended bearing values or other soil parameters.

The application of electronic measurement allows the work to be completed with less labor, reducing the time required for analysis when compared to traditional drill and testing methods.