Continuous Monitoring of Deep Excavation Pits for Damage Prevention

The continuous monitoring of deep excavation pits in the framework of the observational method, in sense of an "interactive / iterative geotechnical design", has been established as an integral and indispensable part of the safety concept. The monitoring indeed conduces not only to the verification of the theoretical model but also to the supervision of the construction process with the aim of damage prevention. The concept of an interactive / iterative adaptation of the construction process as a reaction on the results, gained from the continuous monitoring with the aim of damage prevention, is discussed within this paper by means of an example of an excavation pit for a high-rise building project in Frankfurt am Main where heaves occurred on an adjacent building induced by anchoring works on the retaining structure.