Section through railway track and foundation

Grading in

civil engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

and landscape architectural construction is the work of ensuring a level base, or one with a specified

slope In mathematics, the slope or gradient of a Line (mathematics), line is a number that describes the direction (geometry), direction of the line on a plane (geometry), plane. Often denoted by the letter ''m'', slope is calculated as the ratio of t ...

, for a construction work such as a foundation, the

base course The base course or basecourse in pavements is a layer of material in an asphalt roadway, race track, riding arena, or sporting field. It is located under the surface layer consisting of the '' wearing course'' and sometimes an extra ''binder cour ...

for a

road A road is a thoroughfare used primarily for movement of traffic. Roads differ from streets, whose primary use is local access. They also differ from stroads, which combine the features of streets and roads. Most modern roads are paved. Th ...

or a

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

, or

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

and

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

improvements, or surface drainage. The earthworks created for such a purpose are often called the sub-grade or finished contouring (see diagram).

Regrading

Regrading is the process of grading for raising and/or lowering the levels of land. Such a project can also be referred to as a regrade. Regrading may be done on a small scale (as in preparation of a house site)Trees and Home Construction: Minimizing the impact of construction activity on trees
University of Ohio Extension Bulletin 870-99. Accessed online 16 October 2007. or on quite a large scale (as in major reconfiguration of the terrain of a city, such as the Denny Regrade in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

). Regrading is typically performed to make land more level (flatter), in which case it is sometimes called levelling.) Levelling can have the consequence of making other nearby slopes steeper, and potentially unstable or prone to erosion.

Transportation

In the case of

gravel road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. Gravel roads are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and ...

s and earthworks for certain purposes, grading forms not just the base but the cover and surface of the finished construction, and is often called finished grade.

Process

After the existing conditions of the limit of work has been surveyed,

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the ...

s will set stakes in places that are to be regraded. These stakes have marks on them that either give a finished grade to the design of the project, or have CUT/FILL marks which specify how much dirt is to be added or subtracted. All grade marks are relative to site benchmarks that have been established. The regrading work is then often done using heavy machinery like

bulldozer A bulldozer or dozer (also called a crawler) is a large tractor equipped with a metal #Blade, blade at the front for pushing material (soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock) during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous tracks, ...

s and

excavator Excavators are heavy equipment (construction), heavy construction equipment primarily consisting of a backhoe, boom, dipper (or stick), Bucket (machine part), bucket, and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The modern excavator's ...

s to roughly prepare an area, then a

grader A grader, also commonly referred to as a road grader, motor grader, or simply blade, is a form of heavy equipment with a long blade used to create a flat surface during Grading (engineering), grading. Although the earliest models were towed b ...

is used for a finer finish.

Environmental design

In the

environmental design Environmental design is the process of addressing surrounding environmental parameters when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products. It seeks to create spaces that will enhance the natural, social, cultural and physical environm ...

professions, grading and

regrading Grading in civil engineering and landscape architectural construction is the work of ensuring a level base, or one with a specified slope, for a construction work such as a foundation, the base course for a road or a railway, or landscape and ...

are a specifications and construction component in

landscape design Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...

landscape architecture Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

, and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

projects. It is used for buildings or outdoor amenities regarding foundations and footings,

terracing and stabilizing, aesthetic contouring, and directing

surface runoff Surface runoff (also known as overland flow or terrestrial runoff) is the unconfined flow of water over the ground surface, in contrast to ''channel runoff'' (or ''stream flow''). It occurs when excess rainwater, stormwater, meltwater, or other ...

drainage of

stormwater Stormwater, also written storm water, is water that originates from precipitation (storm), including heavy rain and meltwater from hail and snow. Stormwater can soak into the soil ( infiltrate) and become groundwater, be stored on depressed lan ...

and domestic/irrigation runoff flows.

Purposes

Reasons for regrading include: * Enabling construction on lands that were previously too varied and/or steeply sloped. * Enabling transportation along routes that were previously too varied and/or steep. * Changing drainage patterns and rerouting surface flow. * Improving the stability of terrain adjacent to developments.

Consequences

Potential problems and consequences from regrading include: * Soil and/or

instability * Terrain prone to

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust and then sediment transport, tran ...

Ecological Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...

impacts,

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

destruction, terrestrial and/or aquatic biological losses. * Drainage problems (surface and/or subsurface flow) for areas not considered in the regrading plan.Barry Stone
Adjacent Property Regrading Creates Drainage Problem for Homeowner
doityourself.com. Accessed online 16 October 2007. * Loss of aesthetic

natural landscape A natural landscape is the original landscape that exists before it is acted upon by human culture. The natural landscape and the cultural landscape are separate parts of the landscape. However, in the 21st century, landscapes that are totally ...

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

and/or historical

cultural landscape Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies, to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment. As defined by the World Heritage Committee, it is the "cultural properties hatrepresent the c ...

References

External links

* Matusik, John
"Grading and Earthworks"
in ''The Land Development Handbook'', 2004.
''Gravel Roads Construction and Maintenance Guide''
, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the South Dakota Local Technical Assistance Program (SDLTAP), 2015.
"How to Grade Gravel Roads"
in ''Gravel Roads, Soil Stabilization, Soil-Sement®'' by Frank Elswick, 2017.
''Recommended Practices Manual: A Guideline for Maintenance and Service of Unpaved Roads''
Choctawhatchee, Pea and Yellow Rivers Watershed Management Authority, 2000. {{Authority control Construction Artificial landforms Gardening aids Landscape architecture Road construction