BGC incorporates practice-leading expertise with earth observation and remote sensing technologies, and our management of big data experience to develop geologic models of the natural environment that reduce uncertainty and inform project planning decisions. Our use of 3D augmented reality and other innovative visualization technologies facilitates communication and understanding with stakeholders from all backgrounds.

BGC draws upon standardized approaches with customized adaptations that enable alternative evaluations used to assess impacts across performance objectives, and the likelihood of success for alternatives into the future in response to known hazards, hazard interaction, deterioration effects, and climate change.

All site characterization scopes initiate with an office-based desktop review of public and client data sources, and then often evolve into efficiently designed field investigation campaigns. Our characterization work incorporates in-house expertise in geologic mapping, drilling and borehole logging, cone penetrometer, and other in-situ testing and monitoring, as well as downhole and surface geophysics. BGC’s advanced soil and rock mechanics laboratory specializes in “outside-the-box” testing and has developed unique, state-of-the-art equipment to suit the most challenging project requirements.

BGC performs geotechnical and hydrotechnical design for critical transportation infrastructure assets, including all aspects of slope stability, earth retaining systems, foundation design, and cold regions engineering. Our inclusive earth-science-informed approach leads to designs that consider all geological, hydrotechnical, and geotechnical features of a site and how those may change over time. We combine this approach with experienced transportation geo-professionals to provide designs suited to the scale of the project, life-cycle performance expectations, site conditions, and construction constraints.

BGC’s analysis and design scopes are developed to consider needs related to the value of information, impact on project uncertainty, and communication with stakeholders. For example, project models can be developed in two dimensions or three dimensions, using limit equilibrium and factor of safety, or deformation and reliability analyses. BGC has experienced geotechnical engineers with applied experience across the range of common commercial software for soil, rock, groundwater, soil/structure interaction, and thermal analyses.

BGC provides quality assurance (QA) services during the construction of transportation projects to ensure design intent and reduce conflict from uncertainties in information, ultimately safeguarding the owner’s capital investment. We are experts at designing and implementing practical QA plans that give project owners confidence that designs are built to specifications. Our services include review of quality control (QC) documents, field reviews during construction, review and recommendations related to field fit designs, and monitoring and resolution of technical issues. BGC can also undertake the contract administration role if required.

BGC has industry leading expertise and proprietary methods to monitor a range of geotechnical, weather and hydrotechnical conditions. Our BGC instrumentation and monitoring teams are able to develop appropriate system recommendations, complete installations, and maintain monitoring systems that provide data to match the need for information. Our data management services include database and website development, live data connectivity, custom algorithms, and communication systems to provide warning of tolerance threshold exceedance.

BGC provides clients a critical service in the safe and economical operation of their infrastructure by developing trigger-action-response-plans for hazard sites. This service is supported by on-call emergency response for adverse events that impact service. As part of our practice, we have full-time capabilities for remote monitoring using data management tools and available public and client data, and communicate this information through our cloud-based Cambio software platform. The Cambio platform is used by over 90 linear infrastructure owners in North and South America and Australia to manage operational risk from geohazards.

Incorporated within the Cambio Platform, BGC also integrates monitoring or remotely sensed data such as lidar, photogrammetry, and satellite-based InSAR; contact sensors, such as Shape Accel-Arrays, slope inclinometers and piezometers; or local weather data. The integration of real-time sensor data, including data from Intelligent Transportation Systems, and static earth observation data into the geospatial Cambio platform provides BGC clients with an impactful tool for operational decision support that is not replicated elsewhere.

BGC leads the industry in enabling measurable risk reduction from the intersection of geohazards with linear infrastructure. Our capabilities to assess terrain hazards, perform risk assessment and mitigation design, and inform operational decisions are used on our clients’ projects worldwide and in diverse environments. We combine our specialized knowledge of landslides, hazard interactions, hydrologic and hydrogeologic processes, seismicity, permafrost degradation and other ground hazards with quantitative risk management principles to identify areas of unacceptable risk from the earliest stages of project development through to operations and development of emergency response plans.

BGC is an innovator and a leader in developing web-based transportation geotechnical asset management systems that effectively communicate risk and enable resiliency. To achieve economical long-term asset management performance, we help clients inventory assets and associated geotechnical and hydrotechnical conditions, assess vulnerabilities and changes in performance, and inform risk-based infrastructure investment decisions. We use the web-based risk analytics tools and database systems in our Cambio platform to provide interactive scalability with variable resolution and data overlays that deliver detailed site-specific information on thousands of assets distributed on a regional scale, often spanning governmental boundaries. These systems are also used as a common portal for related asset management resources such as real-time condition information (e.g., instrumentation, weather, stream flow, traffic) and geohazard trigger response protocols.