Coquitlam’s transformation from a mill town on the Fraser River into a dense urban node for Metro Vancouver has placed heavy demands on its underlying geology. The city spreads across glacially over-steepened slopes, alluvial fans at the foot of the Coast Mountains, and pockets of compressible silts near the Coquitlam River, creating a patchwork of geotechnical challenges that simple index tests cannot resolve. For deep excavations along Lougheed Highway or multi-storey mixed-use blocks on North Road, determining the true shear strength of foundation soils requires a triaxial test that replicates in-situ confining pressures and pore-water conditions. Our laboratory, operating under an ISO 17025-accredited quality system, processes undisturbed Shelby tube samples from Coquitlam sites within 48 hours of extraction to minimize moisture loss and sample disturbance before shearing begins.
A CU triaxial test with pore pressure measurement reveals the effective stress path that index tests can only guess at, especially in Coquitlam’s over-consolidated glacial silts.
