Excavation and design support for an energy client's cross-country pipeline.
GeoEngineers provides siting and permitting services for industrial and energy clients.
Auger cast piles being installed at a massive ground improvement project for a new energy storage facility.
GeoEngineers provided impact analyses and restoration measures for dozens of wetlands, critical areas and river/stream crossings for this electrical line transmission project.
Energy and Industry
Industrial Siting and Development
We provide geotechnical and environmental support for industrial clients planning to develop new facilities or expand or renovate existing infrastructure. Our staff have years of experience with the complex and evolving regulations covering the siting and safe storage of industrial and energy byproducts such as coal combustion residuals at power plants. We also have the geotechnical experience to handle industrial development on challenging sites, where soft soils can increase seismic and other risks. Through a combination of subsurface investigations, geotechnical engineering and regulatory expertise, we give our clients the information they need to make smart long-term business decisions for their companies.
Environmental Permitting
In today’s regulatory environment, most industrial development projects require integrated federal, state, and local permitting. GeoEngineers’ permitting professionals are here to help you create and implement realistic strategies that apply rigorous science for optimal regulatory compliance.
- Strategic project management, including regulatory strategy planning, agency consultation, environmental assessment and compliance assurance, public involvement, expert witness and impact fee negotiations.
- Development permits, including building and demolition, stormwater, clearing and grading, floodplain and shoreline development, land use and zoning, utility easements, landfills, waste impounds and permitting for aquatic leasing and air modeling.
- Environmental permits, including critical areas ordinances, EIS, NPDES and state discharge, dangerous/hazardous waste, NEPA/SEPA, CAA, Coal Combustion Residuals and FERC compliance.
- Natural resource permitting, including Endangered Species Act (ESA) compliance, fisheries and hydraulic projects, water rights, water quality and forest practice approvals.
Ground-Improvement Program Design
GeoEngineers uses a combination of methods to improve soil stability, including the design and installation of drains and various preloading strategies. We specialize in ground-improvement programs in soft soil and earthquake-prone areas. Our Performance-Based Engineering Team performs seismic analyses and numerical modeling in soft soils, karst regions, and earthquake-prone areas to predict the interaction between soil and foundation structures during specific types of seismic events. We’ve developed ground-improvement programs for a wide range of energy and industrial clients, including one of the largest ground-improvement projects on the West Coast.
Foundation Design
Our geotechnical engineers design shallow and deep foundations for industrial facilities and associated infrastructure. We provide geotechnical designs, exploration, slope stability and buoyancy analyses, laboratory testing and engineering services for a range of structures including meter stations, large compressor stations, equipment skids and designs and hydrotesting for large-diameter storage tanks.
Environmental Site Assessments
We help energy and industrial clients understand and mitigate their risk by thoroughly investigating the overall ecological health of a property, both developed and undeveloped, and the impact of potential site changes.
Air Quality Testing
GeoEngineers helps facilities stay compliant with the bewildering array of federal, state and local air quality requirements. We help our clients expand their businesses, stay compliant and promote safe and sustainable growth through modeling and impact analyses, documentation, data management, auditing and compliance support, permitting and strategic regulatory planning.
Critical Areas Assessments
GeoEngineers’ experts regularly perform critical areas assessments to evaluate the environmental, human and infrastructure risks at critical sites. Critical areas are typically defined by local or regional authorities, and include sites that are flood-prone, impacted by industrial byproducts, geologically hazardous, critical to a water supply, or important to conservation efforts.
Trenchless Design
Over the past 25 years, GeoEngineers has completed more than one million feet of trenchless design engineering and construction projects, installed by horizontal directional drilling (HDD), Direct Pipe®, microtunneling, Earth Pressure Balance Machine (EPBM) tunneling, and auger bore and jack. We pioneered permitting and design for trenchless projects crossing beneath US Army Corps of Engineers-regulated levees. This expertise is recognized worldwide and has made our firm a leader in geotechnical site characterization studies and HDD design for pipeline crossings. For more on our expansive trenchless services, visit our Pipeline Practice Page.
Stormwater/Water Quality
Our expertise in industrial stormwater control and quality comes from our combined experience with water testing and characterization, federal and local stormwater discharge regulations and investigation of subsurface water flow. We identify stormwater risks for our clients and find solutions to reduce them.
