What is the Role of Excavation for Construction?
Madison Excavation Pro handles large projects, small projects, and everything in-between. Do you have custom challenges? We provide custom solutions.
Typically, excavation involves these things:
- Site Preparation – Involves the clearing away of extraneous and non-relevant items, equipment, plants and rocks. It sometimes requires the leveling of the site. It is preparation for the project location by way of first removing anything that is there that shouldn’t be there. Unwanted trees are to be cut and uprooted. Permanent bench marks are established so that the remainder of construction can be accomplished as a result of their presence as references. It includes the establishment of a location or locations for the General Contractor’s trailer, establishing locations for traffic inflow and outflow to occur, as well as staging areas for locating materials to be used for construction.
- Hauling Dirt – Includes moving not only dirt but any other items, such as gravel and debris. It involves the transportation of anything that may be moved or movable by a dump truck. For a person to legally haul dirt, he is required to have a commercial driver’s license. Dirt can be both hauled onto the job site as well as taken from it. If you are having soil brought to the site, then specifying which type of soil is a necessity. Those types that require more filtering or sorting will be more costly than those that don’t. Mississippi businesses and residents are required to have tarp coverings when hauling loose materials.
- Grading – involves the shaping and shifting by way of cutting and filling of the land present at the site. The soil composition and moisture levels of the soil will guide the Civil Engineer, by way of the Soils Engineering Report, to determine the nature and extent of the grading that needs to occur, as well as the slope of the earth to start, and the desired finish slope. Bulldozers and excavators move a majority of the earth around, followed by a more specific detailed grading by a grader. Erosion, Foundation damage, and flooding are some of the problems that may occur without adequate grading. Grading must occur in order for the building or roadways to be constructed at the site appropriately, which often includes flattening the site by way of adding soil or taking it away by cutting into the earth.
- Trenching – is digging a trench. A trench is defined as a long narrow ditch. They are usually deeper than they are wide. A trench is a channel whereby one may place footings, grade beams and the like as it pertains to the structural design of a house or building. Trenching also includes laying pipe in order to have various underground utilities, such as electrical, plumbing, and gas service an area. The trench may include piping, cables, or conduit. Trenching is an alternative to a “mole” which is a trenchless method of achieving the same goal through boring holes and small tunnels in order to lay the same pipe, conduit or like elements. Walls to trenches are usually subject to cave-in, so safety precautions should be heeded when creating the trenches by supporting the walls of the trenches.
Please see below for a description of how excavation services happen:
The processes may include:
- Cutting and Filling – Concerns the removal (cut) of rock or soil or the addition of rock and soil to a specific location and provides an extended surface area for construction to occur. Cutting is straightforward enough and usually provides a firm basis for construction. Filling, though, has more problems associated with it due to the inevitable settling that occurs, thus requiring ground remediation and other methods to ensure that the building doesn’t sink into the soil under its own weight. Graders, scrapers or excavators, shovels and explosive blasts are all ways that cutting can occur. Filling usually occurs through mixing and moving soil dirt and gravel into new and specific locations and may require retaining walls in order to prevent the soils from shifting.
- Digging – Often includes cutting into the surface of the earth to initiate the removal of soil through excavation followed by the actual moving of the soil away from a specific location.
- Scooping – Using a bulldozer in order to push site objects around- like earth, stone, debris and the like. It is helpful to use a bulldozer with a scoop due to the immense strength and power of the bulldozer.
Needed Equipment includes:
- Backhoe – Swiveling boom arm with a dipper, the backhoe stays in place until the job is done. The swiveling arm assembly can rotate between 0 to 200 degrees.
- Skid Steers – small versions of bulldozers but with interchangeable parts. They are called skid steers because that is how they steer… by a controlled form of skidding.
- Large front-end loaders – are differentiated by their size, although skid steers can have front end loaders.
- Bulldozers – Like mentioned above, bulldozers are the workhorses of the jobsite. Responsible for lifting tons of earth, bulldozers are a necessary part of any big and successfully completed project.
- Trenchers – look like huge chainsaws- they function similarly by cutting deep and narrow channels into the earth.
- Compactors – Roller or Jumping Jack, the compactors are used to decrease the mass of soil, usually filled dirt, in order to have a smooth and continuous surface over an area recently dug or otherwise consolidated for construction purposes. They compact by applying pressure to loose materials so that they become closer together through the elimination of water or air.
Regardless of the things mentioned above, if your project isn’t completed in a safe way, then the value of the work becomes useless. Human life is never a good tradeoff for any project.
Safe work with fair prices, we manage your project through knowledge, skill, experience, understanding and wisdom.
Your project has specific needs. Our supervising crew directs the earth moving field operators in all aspects of your project as needed. The supervisors are trained and experienced, and jump in to lend a helping hand when curve balls are thrown, all while keeping an eye on safety.
Not to brag, but there really is no one better at excavation than we are.
Need performance? Look no further. We excellently supervise our field operators efficiently and effectively to produce the best possible results with fair pricing.