The ground beneath Swansea tells two very different stories. Down in the SA1 docks, you are almost certainly dealing with loose hydraulic fills and alluvial silts dumped during the Victorian copper-smelting boom, while up on the slopes of Townhill, the glacial till sits thin over the Coal Measures bedrock. This contrast means a standard foundation approach rarely works across the city. We design [vibrocompaction](/) programmes specifically tuned to these local profiles, densifying loose granular soils to prevent excessive settlement before construction starts. That pre-treatment step becomes critical when you combine Swansea's high water table with the legacy of backfilled docklands around the River Tawe. Without it, differential settlement can crack a slab within the first two years. Our lab verifies every stage against the BS 5930:2015 code of practice, so the design parameters match what is actually down there.
On Swansea's post-industrial fills, vibrocompaction design without pre-treatment grain-size verification is just guessing with a very loud machine.
