UK-wide digital piling map brings more than 18,000 foundation projects into one platform

A new UK-wide digital map is bringing thousands of completed piling projects into a single geospatial platform, giving foundation designers access to historic project experience that has traditionally remained scattered across contractors, consultants and archived records.

Developed by the Federation of Piling Specialists using ArcGIS, the FPS Geotechnical Data Map allows users to explore where different piling and foundation techniques have previously been used, the ground conditions encountered and the contractors involved. At launch, the platform already contained information from 18,711 completed piling sites across the UK. 

The value lies less in replacing site-specific ground investigation and more in improving the information available at the earliest stages of a project. Foundation decisions are often made before detailed investigation results are available, while decades of relevant experience may exist nearby but remain inaccessible inside company archives. Mapping previous schemes geographically allows project teams to identify comparable sites and understand which foundation techniques have already been applied successfully under similar geological conditions.

The dataset is also expected to become significantly larger. Many participating organisations initially concentrated on digitising records from approximately the past five years, but older paper archives extending back more than two decades are now being incorporated. Future development could also introduce additional technical information, including pile testing data, allowing the platform to evolve from a map of project experience into a broader foundation performance database.

One of its most interesting applications is the potential reuse of existing foundations. Redevelopment projects frequently encounter piles from previous structures, but incomplete records can make determining their geometry, capacity and suitability difficult. In many cases, uncertainty can lead to existing foundations being ignored and entirely new systems being constructed.

Improved access to historical piling records could allow reuse to be considered much earlier. Existing piles would still require verification, assessment of their condition and capacity, and confirmation that they are compatible with the new loading arrangement. Nevertheless, knowing that foundations exist, how they were constructed and which organisation delivered them provides an important starting point that has often been missing. Reusing suitable foundations could reduce concrete and steel consumption, construction activity and the embodied carbon associated with new substructure works. 

The map also reflects a wider change in how geotechnical information is being treated. Ground investigation records, pile testing results, construction data and project experience have historically been generated in large quantities but often become difficult to access once individual projects are completed. Converting those records into structured and searchable datasets gives them value beyond the original construction site.

As more historic projects are digitised, the strength of the platform will increasingly depend on the quantity, quality and consistency of the information contributed. Its development nevertheless demonstrates how existing geotechnical knowledge can be reused in much the same way as physical foundations themselves, reducing uncertainty on new projects while supporting more efficient foundation design and a more circular approach to ground engineering.