The Sisters of St. Francis engaged Trautman Associates to design a new community living center for retired sisters. Trautman Associates engaged McMahon & Mann to explore the subsurface conditions, develop foundation recommendations and monitor subgrade construction.

The site is located in a former man-made pond built in the 1800’s to service a mill. The pond has been drained leaving a meadow. The project required raising the existing grades in the deepest portions of the meadow, which would cause a soft clay deposit to compress and lead to intolerable building settlements. Therefore, McMahon & Mann recommended raising the site grades and delaying foundation construction until the subgrade had compressed from the weight of the fill.

We developed a monitoring program that consisted of settlement devices and vibrating wire piezometers to measure the response of the soft clay deposit from the weight of the fill. Once the data showed that the clay deposit had stabilized, foundation construction began.