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From Ground Conditions to Social Outcomes

Tracey Radford discusses the expanding role for engineering geologists and the need to rethink the philosophy that underpins ground investigations in the UK.

Words by Tracey Radford
1 September 2026
Hospital construction in Whitchurch, Wales

When infrastructure is delayed, so too are the benefits it is meant to bring, such as access to schools, hospitals and care services. Construction work on the site of a new hospital in Whitchurch, a suburb of Cardiff , Wales, which is on track to open in spring 2027 © iStock

Engineering geology has traditionally been framed around a simple and powerful premise: if we understand the ground well enough, we can design safely. That remains true, but it is no longer the complete picture.

Ground conditions affect more than structures; they shape how buildings perform for the people who rely on them. They affect how well buildings endure, how reliably they function, and how much confidence communities can place in them over time.

As engineering geologists, we know that the ground matters, and our profession has built a rich vocabulary for describing its behaviour and risks. What we have been less good at is explaining what those subsurface conditions mean in social terms. That matters because infrastructure policy is now concerned not just with what gets built, but with what it delivers: growth, homes, reliable services and resilience.

Our profession has an opportunity—and a responsibility—to show how understanding the ground can help society build better. It’s time to rethink ground investigation.

Social infrastructure

Ground-related risks are usually described in technical or contractual language such as delay, redesign, claims, cost overrun—but their consequences extend much further. When infrastructure is delayed, so too are the benefits it is meant to bring: better connectivity, affordable energy, and access to schools, hospitals and care services.

Ground conditions affect more than structures; they shape how buildings perform for the people who rely on them

Poorly understood ground conditions can stall projects and inflate costs, but they can also delay improvements in the services and places people depend on. Social infrastructure shapes so much of everyday life. When ground conditions are misunderstood or overlooked, the consequences are ultimately borne by the people who use those places: disrupted services, unsafe buildings, reduced trust in institutions and, in some cases, exclusion from opportunity altogether.

As professionals we do not always make that connection clearly enough. Part of that means giving social infrastructure—our housing, hospitals, schools, colleges, prisons and courts—which support our communities and public services the same attention as the infrastructure that supports our transport, energy, water, etc., and enables economic growth and productivity.

There has been a broader shift towards thinking about infrastructure in terms of lived experience: who can access it, how it functions in practice, and who benefits from it. For example, the National Infrastructure Commission’s Infrastructure Resilience Roundtable (NIC, 2020) stressed the need to anticipate shocks and stresses and to plan for adaptation over time, making clear that resilience is a matter of public interest, not simply technical good practice. The report noted that ‘in the last two years we have seen major floods, the worst loss of power and water for a decade, and many disruptions to rail and telecom service provision. Covid-19 has shown that significant high impact disruptions can and do happen.’ And geopolitical events since then have only strengthened the point, with renewed pressures on energy supply and defence resilience.

Public funding is under increasing pressure, and investment has to be directed where it will make the greatest long-term difference. Cost overruns and delays are not abstract failures. An overspent scheme can crowd out funding for others. A hospital delayed is care postponed. A prematurely deteriorating asset diverts resources away from frontline services. Seen in that light, ground investigation is not only a technical exercise; it is also a way of managing social risk.

Who bears the risk?

These issues are particularly acute when viewed through the lens of housing and social equity. The UK Government has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes in England over the life of this parliament, at an average rate of around 300,000 a year, which includes seven new towns (GOV.UK, 2025a & 2025b). That scale of ambition is likely to bring more constrained and geotechnically complex land into development with subsurface conditions becoming a strategic issue rather than a technical detail. Decisions about where we build, what investigations are undertaken and how early uncertainty is addressed directly influence who is exposed to periodic hazards such as flooding, or to longer-term burdens such as subsidence, and who is protected from them.

There has been a shift towards thinking about infrastructure in terms of lived experience

Recent housing developments affected by slope instability or drainage failure illustrate the point starkly (e.g. Menteth, 2025a & 2025b). Residents can find themselves living in homes that are unsafe or unsellable, with responsibility fragmented between developers and local authorities. Pressure to build quickly can, if poorly managed, transfer ground risk to the communities least able to absorb it.

Arial view of a new housing development during construction

The UK Government has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes in England over the life of this parliament, which is likely to bring more geotechnically complex land into development. Decisions about where we build, what investigations are undertaken and how early uncertainty is addressed influence who is exposed to periodic hazards and who is protected from them © Getty

Flood risk tells a similar story. Around 6.3 million properties in England—roughly one in five properties today—are already in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea and/or surface water. Many of those at-risk areas were designated long before modern climate projections, and the total could rise to around 8 million, or one in four properties, by 2050, once climate change is taken into account (GOV.UK, 2025c & 2025d). Consequently, UK investment in flood defences has risen to the order of £20–25 billion over the past 25 years, through successive national programmes since 2000, including more than £6 billion invested since 2010 and multi-year capital programmes exceeding £5 billion in the 2020s (Burnett & Bolton, 2026).

Taken together, these examples point to the long-term social cost of underestimating ground and hydrological risk. The role of ground investigation in anticipating long-term change therefore becomes even more critical. When slopes fail and roads close, the consequence is not only disruption to transport networks; it can mean missed appointments, longer journeys to school or work, interrupted care and communities cut off from essential services. All of this strengthens the case for understanding groundwater behaviour, soil response and land stability over decades rather than only at the point of construction.

Learning from our own history

The history of engineering geology in the UK is one of continual adaptation (Fig. 1), with each phase of that evolution changing the questions we ask of ourselves and the ground.

Post-war reconstruction placed emphasis on data gathering and observational practice. Later decades brought repeated reminders of the consequences of insufficient or poorly scoped investigation, prompting the development of standards, guidance and shared best practice.

Advances in digital data, GIS and improved ground modelling strengthened our ability to interpret and communicate subsurface conditions at scale. The continued evolution of UK ground investigation standards, including updates that align practice with international classification and Eurocode expectations, reflects that learning curve and the growing importance of consistency in reporting, interpretation and data capture.

More recently, the emphasis has shifted again, towards decision-led ground modelling, in which subsurface information becomes a risk-management tool.

Seen this way, the philosophy of ground investigation has evolved through a series of deeper questions. We have moved from asking how much data we have, to questioning its quality, then whether we are obtaining the right data for the decision in hand. The next step in that evolution may be the most important: is the information collected helping to shape better outcomes for society (see box ‘Shaping better outcomes’)?

This approach is supported by guidance from the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment (IAEG; Baynes & Parry, 2024) which invites us to see the ground model not simply as a technical artefact, but as a foundation for better decisions from the outset of a project. At the planning stage, the conceptual model becomes a way of making uncertainty visible, shaping choices about where and how we build, and influencing the resilience, affordability and long-term outcomes that communities depend on.

Shaping better outcomes

What would we specify differently if ground investigation were judged not only by cost and project outcomes, but by the social risk it helps to prevent?

  1. How would we define a good ground investigation if we judged it by the outcomes it helps secure, not simply the risks it helps avoid?
  2. Who are we really trying to inform when we describe the ground—and who remains outside that conversation?
  3. What case histories would we choose to publish and celebrate? And what does that say about what we value?
  4. If the consequences of poor understanding are increasingly social as well as technical, what should we stop accepting as good enough?

Ground investigation as public value

The Government’s UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy (GOV.UK, 2025) makes a clear link between infrastructure investment and wider public outcomes. That offers a helpful policy context for thinking about how decisions below ground influence what happens above it.

The strategy is clear about the outcomes it seeks, but less explicit about the practical conditions needed to secure them. At the same time, public spending and procurement guidance has placed greater emphasis on whole-life value and wider social, economic and environmental benefit, making it both easier and more necessary to describe ground investigation in those terms.

To do that, we need to talk about the value of ground investigation differently. Within the profession, phrases such as ‘risk reduction’ and ‘programme certainty’ are well understood, but they do not always resonate with those people who make the decisions about funding. The case needs to be made in terms they recognise: fewer delays to housing delivery, lower whole-life costs for public assets, more reliable schools and hospitals, and greater confidence in regeneration programmes. A delayed scheme is not simply a matter for the project team; it can mean a school opening late, a ward remaining overcrowded, or a service continuing to operate from unsuitable accommodation. Framed in this way, ground investigation becomes part of how we secure productivity, social equity and better places, rather than simply a technical input.

Ground investigation is better understood as part of the public value of infrastructure rather than as a narrow preliminary cost. When it is proportionate, timely and well scoped, it reduces long-term risk and disruption and helps create safer, more adaptable and more trusted assets. Whereas a poor understanding of the ground can quietly undermine affordability, deliverability and service resilience over the life of an asset.

Data for growth

Although it has not yet progressed into legislation, the proposed Geotechnical Data Bill marks a shift in direction. By mandating the sharing of geotechnical data through the Government’s National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), the Bill aims to address the long-standing problem of fragmented and inaccessible ground data. The intent to enable sharing of factual geotechnical data reflects a growing recognition that ground information is not just project data, but infrastructure in its own right.

Related policy direction already exists: The Construction Playbook (GOV.UK, 2020) sets expectations for how public works are assessed, procured and delivered. It also includes clauses and supporting material aimed at improving the sharing and reuse of subsurface/ground investigation data on public sector projects.

Greater openness in data sharing has the potential to reduce duplication, improve early-stage decision-making, and enable more equitable access to subsurface intelligence. More fundamentally, it challenges us to think differently about collaboration, moving from project-by-project ownership towards our industry taking collective stewardship of ground knowledge.

The NUAR provides an instructive analogue: a national approach to standardising and sharing underground asset information is intended to improve safety and efficiency and is associated with projected economic benefits from reduced disruption and better data access.

Case studies

For all the emphasis here on social infrastructure, the most readily available case studies and lessons learnt libraries—those essential repositories of real-world project outcomes, best practices, and operational insights—still come from more traditional forms of infrastructure. That imbalance is revealing. It suggests not that ground risk is less significant in healthcare, education, justice or housing, but that these projects are less often treated as sources of shared professional knowledge.

Part of the reason may be practical. Ground investigation for hospitals, schools, housing and justice facilities is often captured in project reports, planning portals and client archives rather than in peer-reviewed papers. By contrast, major civil schemes such as tunnels, dams and energy projects have generated a much more visible case-history literature. Yet social infrastructure has every bit as much to teach us: about consequence, performance, adaptation and the long-term relationship between the ground and the people who rely on what is built above it.

If we want ground risk in social infrastructure to be taken seriously, we also need to present the information as knowledge worth sharing. Good case studies do more than document difficulty or failure. They explain context, uncertainty, decision-making and outcome in a way that allows others to learn. In that sense, publication is not simply a record of what happened on one scheme; it is part of how professional judgment is refined across the discipline.

The value of case studies applies equally to projects that went well and to those that did not. Well-chosen case histories of success can show what thoughtful investigation made possible, while honest accounts of difficulty or failure help the profession understand where judgment, scope or communication fell short. It’s not about apportioning blame but understanding where we can do better, to take on the philosophy of “Standing on the shoulders of giants”.

If the philosophy of ground investigation is continuing to evolve, then the case study has an important place within that evolution. It is one of the means by which experience becomes shared practice, and by which individual projects contribute to a wider understanding of public value.

If we want ground risk in social infrastructure to be taken seriously, we also need to present the information as knowledge worth sharing

An expanding role

All of this points to a wider professional role. Engineering geologists are no longer only characterising strata or deriving parameters; we are increasingly informing planning decisions, shaping spatial development and contributing to resilience and equity.

Male and female architects discussing over blueprint at construction site

Engineering geologists are no longer only characterising strata or deriving parameters; we are increasingly informing planning decisions, shaping spatial development and contributing to resilience and equity © Getty

There is a risk, however, that if we do not engage at this level, social outcomes will be decided without ground insight. We may remain technically excellent yet confined to late-stage, low-influence roles, strategically irrelevant despite the importance of our knowledge.

Delivering better outcomes will require closer collaboration across disciplines than has traditionally been the case. Ground investigation must be integrated earlier with planning, environmental assessment, hydrology and asset operation, rather than treated as a discrete technical stage.

This is particularly important in social infrastructure, where the interaction between ground conditions, building performance and user experience is immediate and visible. Collaboration is not simply about efficiency; it is about ensuring that decisions made in isolation do not create unintended consequences for communities. Rethinking ground investigation is therefore not simply about how much data we collect, or even how good those data are. It is about asking a more fundamental question: are we using our understanding of the ground to shape better outcomes for society?

What if ground investigation were judged not primarily by its immediate cost, but by the social risk it helps to prevent?

If engineering geologists want to help shape the future of the built environment, we must explain the value of ground data more clearly, collaborate earlier and place our expertise where decisions about funding, policy and place are made.

The question is no longer whether we understand the ground well enough to build safely, but whether we are using that understanding to help society build better.

Author

Tracey Radford

Practice Director at AtkinsRéalis, UK

Further reading

 

Citation: Radford, T. From ground conditions to social outcomes. Geoscientist, 36 (3), 30-35, 2026. DOI: 10.1144/geosci2026-027

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