THE 100+ PROGRAM: 3 or 30 million? The price of engineering surveys in the construction economy

On October 4, the 100+ Forum Russia will host a thematic session on "The importance of engineering surveys in the economics of high-rise and unique construction." Alexey Bershov, lecturer at the Department of Engineering and Environmental Geology at the Faculty of Geology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, CEO of Petromodeling Group, will talk about how unreliable engineering survey data affects the cost of construction and design decisions.

Investors are trying to minimize their costs at all stages of construction. At the same time, engineering surveys often come under attack – the stage of obtaining and analyzing the initial data for design, and, consequently, the calculated justification of the design decisions made. "It is well known to geological engineers and geotechnical specialists involved in the calculation of the foundation part of structures and engineering protection that the accuracy of geological data is extremely important. For example, avoiding the use of a pile foundation during the construction of a standard section of a 25-storey building in the geological conditions of Moscow and the region saves the developer 20 – 35 million rubles. Often, the adoption of a particular design decision on the type of foundation depends on such an indicator as the modulus of total soil deformation. The price of underestimating this indicator by 1 MPa is expressed in 2-3 million rubles during construction. The cost of obtaining more reliable data is hardly 10-20% of this cost. All this becomes doubly relevant due to the fact that the prospector, not receiving enough funding, is forced to save on literally everything, including expensive field and laboratory research, which leads to massive falsifications," said Alexey Bershov.

"There are other more significant cost examples. Thus, unreliable data on the position and fluctuations of the groundwater level in the design of structures with pits more than five meters deep and linear dimensions of 100x40 meters, are expressed in an increase in the final cost of construction by tens of millions of rubles. At the same time, obtaining reliable hydrogeological data has a cost of the first million rubles," the expert explained.

The experts of the development companies agree with the expressed point of view. According to their calculations, with low-quality engineering and geological surveys (IGI) at the design stage, the average cost increase of the project may amount to 1.5 million rubles, the average time loss is 1.5–2.5 months. When cases of substandard IGI are detected during the construction phase, financial losses increase to 10 million rubles, and the average delay in construction is a month.

Unfortunately, the problem, which is extremely relevant in the modern conditions of our country, is little discussed at the level of managers responsible for financing construction work of any scale, be it Olympic construction or typical urban development.

We invite all interested experts to participate in the discussion. Admission to the session is free, registration as a member of the 100+ Forum Russia is required via the link.