Wee Notes & Breaking News

Settlement or Subsidence?

Our man in the south, George Shepherd, will take you to task if you get these two terms confused. In land development settlement is a normal function of the soil being compressed (via raised pore water pressure leading to the reduction in soil water content) when a load is applied. Such loads could be an embankment or a building or any other load. The settlement curve is well understood in geo-technics with the initial days showing the fastest settlement and the whole thing tending towards zero over time. Currently, we have sites in the west of Scotland where we are monitoring settlement over time following large scale earthworks over soft Clyde Alluvial soils. We know the area well and have been able to resolve the complex factors involved in the calculations, modelling and monitoring for each of a number of large sites successfully. The key is consistent attention with George being master of the modelling in this case.

Subsidence is a different animal where the land sinks due to some form of underground void or instability. In the central belt of Scotland, this often entails historic mining and in such cases our Alex Muir is the go-to man. Alex is a dab hand at interpreting historic mine abandonment plans and locating old mine shafts. All of these problems can be resolved with sound engineering solutions and, if you do this right, you can turn an economically marginal site into a viable proposition.