Slope Failure

THE PROBLEM

Active or marginal slope movement threatens infrastructure above and below it — and gets worse with every wet season the design doesn't account for. The fix usually combines mechanical restraint (anchors, soil nails, rock bolts) with water removal (horizontal drains), engineered to the specific failure mode and geology on site.

JDC'S APPROACH

JDC installs strand anchors ranging from 57-strand down to 3-strand configurations, in lengths from 50 to 300 feet. We've drilled 100-foot anchors at 3-foot centers with 0.2 percent directional accuracy — the kind of precision that matters when the design demands a specific load path through the failure surface.

Rock bolting and soil nail work is done from platforms suspended by crane rather than from ropes — safer for the crew and more accurate for production drilling on the steep slopes where this work usually lives.

When the slope's real problem is water, our horizontal drain program installs drains up to 1,500 feet deep into the failure mass to pull water pressure out and let mechanical restraint do its work. We've done both at scale — see the ND DOT Tie Back project for an example of the anchor side.