Ground Improvement – A Green Technology towards a Sustainable Housing, Infrastructure and Utilities Developments in Malaysia

Abstract

In the rapid expansion in housing, infrastructure and utilities developments in the last 30 years, engineers have to deal with less favourable sites such as coastal lowlands, swamps, filled ground, reclaimed land, etc. A number of mega size infrastructure projects such as the construction of the 966-km North-South Expressway, the 179-km electrified double-tracking railway project between Rawang and Ipoh, etc. would have been economically non-viable and/or technically non-feasible if they had been constructed using conventional methods meant for good soil conditions. For these mega projects and other similar projects, it was necessary to explore the innovations of using non-conventional methods when poor soil conditions may impair the integrity and serviceability of the structures. In such situations, the natural condition of poor soil needs to be altered to meet the project requirements where settlement requirements are more stringent and poor ground strength needs to be significantly improved. This is termed as ground improvement. The common types of ground improvement used are described in this paper. Due to the increasing awareness of the construction impact on the environment, sustainable construction techniques using green technology such as ground improvement is also increasingly used. A carbon footprint auditing system is introduced for some of the commonly used ground improvement methods.