What is Material Suitability Assessment?

Material suitability assessment is a certification of the proposed fill material for use as engineered or structural fills. Structural fill can be used to bring out aptly shaped landforms for structures to build high standards in minimizing the risk of ground movements that cause unexpected damage to property constructed on shallow foundations. Earthworks are carried out to Australian Standard AS 3798 (Guidelines on earthworks for commercial and residential developments), which specifies minimum criteria that is acceptable for structural fills. Structural fills must be free of deleterious materials, have an appropriate level of internal friction and cohesion and plasticity. These specifications must be carefully specified by a suitably qualified Geotechnical Engineer for the proposed development taking place.

Parameters that are related to development for highway embankments are not required accurately always for fills on which buildings will be constructed; as a result, more stringent specifications are needed than for highway purposes.

Highway schemes are considered as major projects in civil engineering. On the other hand, schemes involving low-rise buildings constructed on engineering fills are comparatively small in scale. However, control procedures need to be apt to the scale of the project and the criticality of settlement tolerance.