The most expensive mistake on a Dublin site is assuming uniform bearing capacity across glacial till. A 2023 review by the Institution of Engineers of Ireland noted that over 40% of excessive settlement claims in the Greater Dublin Area originated from undetected lenses of soft clay within the till. These lenses are common in the northern suburbs, from Santry to Swords, where the till interface with underlying limestone can be erratic. A shallow foundation design that ignores these local variations fails before the superstructure is even loaded. Our approach maps the bearing stratum at close intervals, often combining test pits for visual logging of the weathered rockhead with grain-size analysis to confirm drainage characteristics directly beneath the footing zone. The result is a design that works with Dublin's geology, not against it.
In Dublin's glacial till, a 50 kPa difference in allowable bearing pressure can mean the difference between a standard strip footing and an expensive raft.
