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Retaining wall certification: what it covers and what you receive

A certified retaining wall comes with three things: an engineer's design, evidence it was built to that design, and a certificate saying so. The design sets the section, footing, drainage and any geogrid or steel. During construction the engineer, or the contractor under an inspection and test plan, checks the hold points: base preparation, first course, drainage, each geogrid level, backfill compaction. At completion the engineer issues a certificate of structural adequacy that the council, certifier or head contractor requires before the wall is accepted. On civil and commercial work the inspection and test plan, compaction results and material certificates are handed over with it. UCBC designs, builds and certifies walls as one contract, so the certificate arrives with the wall rather than being chased afterwards.

Design

Certification starts with a design that can be certified: an engineer's drawings and calculations for the specific wall on the specific ground. A wall built from a generic detail cannot be certified after the fact with confidence.

Inspection during construction

Hold points are the stages that cannot be checked once covered: the base, the first course, the drainage, each layer of geogrid, the steel in a reinforced wall. They are inspected and recorded as the wall rises. On head-contractor work this runs under an inspection and test plan agreed before the wall starts.

What you receive

The engineer's certificate, the as-built drawings where they differ from design, the inspection records, compaction test results where required, and the material certificates for blocks, geogrid, pipe and rock. That package satisfies a certifier, a council and a head contractor's quality system.

Questions we are asked

Can you certify a wall someone else built?
Only if it can be inspected, which usually means excavating behind it. It is far simpler to certify a wall as it is built.
Is certification included in your price?
Design and certification are part of the job on every engineered wall we build.

Specifying a wall?
We will help.

Send the drawings or describe the site. We recommend a system and price it, with the certification included.

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