Ground Investigation
Explore Geotechnical is now part of LDE
If you came looking for Explore Geotechnical, you are in the right place. The drilling, geophysics and laboratory testing Explore did from Gisborne and around the country now runs through LDE Engineers & Scientists.
What Changed
The same crews, a bigger team behind them
Explore Geotechnical joined LDE, and exploregeotechnical.co.nz now points here. The field work has not changed: the same rigs, the same crews, the same interpreted logs to New Zealand standards. What is different is the engineering team standing behind the data.
LDE is an engineering and environmental consultancy working across New Zealand, so an investigation that starts as a borehole can carry on into foundation design, civil works, contaminated land assessment or consenting support without you commissioning a separate consultant for each step.
By its own account, Explore has been drilling since 2005, with roots in Tairāwhiti. That East Coast base is still there, now as part of the LDE Gisborne team.
What Explore Did
Three lines of work, all still running
Explore covered ground investigation, service location and CPT drilling. Every one of those continues under LDE.
Drilling
Rigs that reach what conventional drilling cannot: landslides, embankments, hard-to-access faces and confined spaces, without an excavator and a pre-formed access track. Cone penetration testing, boreholes including fully cored, direct-push sampling to calibrate CPT against real core, test pits, hand augers and core logging. One rig can cover CPTs, boreholes and test pits on the same visit, which is usually where the saving is on a site that would otherwise need three mobilisations.
Geophysics and service location
Non-invasive imaging of what is under the ground before anything is dug: ground penetrating radar, seismic refraction and MASW, electrical resistivity imaging, magnetometry and EM survey, and borehole geophysics. Also underground service location, so a design is set out around the pipes and cables that are actually there.
Laboratory testing
Soil classification, compaction and density, CBR and pavement parameters, triaxial and direct shear, permeability and consolidation. Reported with an interpretation rather than a table of numbers, so the result can go straight into a design or a consent application.
Tairāwhiti
Where to find us
The Gisborne team works from 426 Palmerston Road, Gisborne 4010, and the office line is +64 6 867 3035.
Hours and a map are on the Gisborne office page, and the other bases are listed under offices. To scope a specific site, use the enquiry form and one of the engineers will come back to you.
For what each investigation method actually measures, start with geotechnical investigation. For the wider service, geotechnical engineering.
Past Work
Looking for an old Explore log or report?
If you need a copy of a borehole log, CPT trace, geophysics survey or laboratory result Explore issued for your site, get in touch with the address and roughly when the work was done, and we will find it. There is more on how that works in requesting a copy of a past report.
One of Explore’s more specialised lines was ground penetrating radar in cemeteries, locating unmarked graves and confirming remaining capacity for councils and trusts. That work is written up under GPR cemetery investigations.