Booking a geotechnical drilling investigation in the Lower Mainland: access, permits, and getting the rig to your site

The drilling itself is usually the quickest part of a geotechnical investigation. What eats the schedule is everything around it — access, clearance, and permits. Line those up early and a rig can be on your site and coring the same week. Miss one and a booked crew stands around, or worse, hits a utility.

Here's the short checklist we walk clients through before we mobilize anywhere in the Lower Mainland.

The short version: confirm access and ground conditions, get utilities cleared, sort any permit or traffic control, and give us the borehole locations and target depths. Do that and scheduling is easy — we bring the rig to you.

1. Site access — can the rig actually get to the holes?

Track and truck rigs need a path in and room to set up. Before we book, we want to know:

• Where the boreholes go and whether a rig can reach each one.
• Overhead limits — power lines, low structures, tree canopy, indoor/parkade height.
• Ground conditions — soft, wet, or steep ground may need mats or a track rig.
• Gates, locks, and hours — who lets us in, and when the site is available.

A five-minute conversation (or a couple of photos) here saves a wasted mobilization.

2. Utility clearance — the non-negotiable

Before a single hole goes down, underground utilities have to be located. Public services are located through BC 1 Call; private and on-site services (a site's own power, irrigation, or process lines) are a separate step that's easy to forget. On developed or industrial sites, a private locate is worth every dollar — hitting a line is the one mistake that turns a routine day into an incident.

We won't drill a hole that hasn't been cleared. Getting the locate started early keeps it off the critical path.

3. Permits, traffic, and notice

Depending on where you're drilling, you may need:

We'll tell you which of these your job triggers and help you get ahead of them — but the permit clock is the one thing that can't be rushed at the last minute.

4. Give us the scope

To quote and schedule tightly, we want:

• Borehole locations (a marked-up site plan is perfect).
• Target depths and what you're sampling for.
• Method preference — or let us recommend auger vs. sonic based on the ground.
• Deliverables — SPT logs, continuous core, wells, sample handling.

Why "we bring the rig to you" isn't just a slogan

We're owner-operated and mobile across the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley — Vancouver, Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and out to the towns in between. The same crew that quotes your job runs the rig and logs your soil, so nothing gets lost in a handoff.

Got an investigation coming up? Send us the site plan and target depths and we'll come back with a straight quote, the right method, and a date. Talk to Trueground before you finalize the scope — we'll flag anything that'll stall the schedule while there's still time to fix it.