If anyone is in the planning stages of putting up a structure, like a mall or bridge, it is necessary to purloin the services of a geotechnical engineer to examine the site for weakness. Geotechnical engineering is a discipline that looks far below the surface that is to be built on to make sure that the ground will be able to take the weight of the building, or be able to hold back liquid as in the building of dams or jetties.
In the past people would just throw up buildings without thought for foundations or weaknesses in the earth. Inevitably, these buildings would collapse taking many lives with them. Even today in third world countries where no one is consulted about buildings; this is a common experience. We all know how hard it is to get a building plan past planning officers, but it is for this very reason that they are so tight on the limitations of where and how the structure should be built.
The consultant will take into consideration all kinds of points when he is surveying a site; the absence or presence of an underground stream perhaps, or whether the bedrock is too far down or too close to the surface. All these factors will have some kind of influence over the final result and then he will be able to say if the site is suitable for building or not. If it is, he can say what kind of foundations, and more importantly, what strength of foundations will be needed to hold up the building.
Where coastal regions come into play the addition of water geotechnical engineer new zealand 
makes the survey even more difficult. The enormous power of water constantly battering the shore may make it impossible to build a structure there. However, there are enough bridges and jetties to show that these problems are surmountable.
One particularly difficult job is to make a base for offshore drilling platforms. These must be stable since they are pumping out huge volumes of gas or oil and any slippage could not only be a disaster for those on the rig, it could also be an environmental disaster in the surrounding oceans. Therefore, getting these consultants to check all and every angle is absolutely imperative.
This discipline has grown over the past few centuries but foundations themselves have been built of literally thousands of years. However these days, they are far more technical than in the past. Not only are soil samples taken, they are tested for how much water they will hold, how much air they already hold and so on. It is very technical but this is how these great structures are built, and more importantly, how they stay standing.
They have just unveiled the tallest building in the world in Dubai, but it is obvious that without these consultants, none of this would have been possible. Indeed, even the smallest house must still have the go ahead from this type of consultant otherwise disaster would surely follow in the years to come.
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