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Soil nailing for highway construction and maintenance in Ontario

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Soil nailing for highway construction and
maintenance in Ontario
Tae-C Kim
Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
Jinyuan Liu
Department of Civil Engineering, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
Stephen Lee
Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a state-of-the-practice report on the development of soil nailing technique and a prospective review
for its applications in the highway construction and maintenance in Ontario, Canada. Soil nailing is a passive reinforcing
technique where the stability of a soil mass is reinforced by mobilizing mainly the pullout contribution of regularly spaced
nails inserted in the soil mass when there is a ground movement. Among various construction techniques, the drilled-
and-grouted soil nail is the most popular soil nailing in practice. Soil nailing has been successfully applied in different
ground conditions around the world since its inception four decades ago. Related to highway construction, soil nailing
has been applied in many cases, including new road cut support, existing road widening, repairing of existing retaining
structures, and reinforcing unstable slopes. Given the vast land of Ontario and existence of favorable ground conditions,
it is expected that soil nailing will become a very popular reinforcing system in the near future in Ontario. The easy set-up
of plant and mobility of soil nail equipment is extremely attractive for highway development and maintenance or repair
work in remote areas, particularly in Northern Ontario. A total of more than three hundred design codes, guidelines,
research articles, and case histories have been collected for this study. The new developments of risk categories,
reliability-based design, and new facing types will be discussed in this paper. In summary, soil nailing is a very promising
technique and will have a bright future for infrastructure development in Ontario.

RÉSUMÉ
Cet article présente un rapport d'état de la pratique sur le développement du sol clouage technique et une étude
prospective de ses applications dans la construction de la route et d'entretien en Ontario, au Canada. Clouage des sols
est un passif renforcement technique où la stabilité d'un sol masse est renforcée en mobilisant principalement la
contribution de l'arrachement des clous espacés régulièrement insérés dans la masse du sol lorsqu'il y a un mouvement
de terrain. Parmi les différentes techniques de construction, le clou du sol foré et jointoyé est le plus populaire du sol
clouage dans la pratique. Clouage des sols a été appliquée avec succès dans des conditions de sol différents partout
dans le monde depuis sa création il y a quatre décennies. Liés à la construction de l'autoroute, clouage des sols a été
appliquée dans de nombreux cas, y compris la nouvelle route de réduire le soutien, existant route élargissement, la
réparation de structures de soutènement existantes, renforcer les pentes instables. Étant donné les vastes terres de
l'Ontario et les disponibilités des conditions favorables diversement au sol, il est prévu que le clouage des sols deviendra
un système très populaire qui se renforcent dans un proche avenir en Ontario. L'installation facile de la plante et de la
mobilité du matériel ongle sol sont extrêmement attractifs pour l'aménagement routier et de travaux de maintenance ou
de réparation dans des régions éloignées, particulièrement dans le nord de l'Ontario. Un total de normes de conception
de plus de trois cents, lignes directrices, recherche articles et histoires de cas ont été rassemblés pour cette étude. Les
nouveaux développements des catégories de risque, la conception basée sur la fiabilité et nouveau face à types seront
discutés dans cet article. En résumé, le clouement de sol est une technique très prometteuse et aura un bel avenir pour
le développement de l'infrastructure en Ontario.

1 INTRODUCTION the world. Due to its cost-effectiveness and satisfactory

Soil nailing technology is evolved from rock bolting
technique in tunnelling and has been developed for
approximately four decades. One of its first field
applications was actually reported in Vancouver, Canada
in 1969 (FHWA 1998).
Soil nailing is a passive reinforcing technique where
soil nails contribute to the stability of a slope only when
there is a ground movement. Among various construction
techniques, the drilled-and-grouted soil nail is the most
popular construction method. Soil nailing has been
successfully applied in various ground conditions around
performance, it has gained popularity in many parts of the
world, including Western Canada. Related to highway
construction, soil nailing has been applied in many areas,
including new road cut support, existing road widening,
and reinforcing unstable embankments. However, it is not
a popular system in Ontario. Given the vast land of
Ontario and existence of favorable ground conditions, it is
expected that it will become a very popular reinforcing
system in the future.
Based on a collection of over three hundred related
reports and articles, this paper presents a state-of-the-
practice report on the development of soil nailing and
provides a prospective review of its potential applications
in highway construction and maintenance in Ontario.
2 HISTORY OF ITS DEVELOPMENT
The concept of soil nailing originated from the rock-bolting
technique used for the New Austrian Tunneling Method
where the rock bolts are installed followed by the
application of reinforced shotcrete. The rock-bolts
contribute to the stability of surrounding rocks through the
mobilization of its tensile strength at relatively small
deformation and its performance is enhanced by the
continuity of shotcrete, as shown in Figure 1a. Soil nailing
is incepted when this technique is applied in soils where
regularly patterned soil nails are installed in soil mass in
conjunction with facing elements, as shown in Figure 1b.
with the increasing number of existing slopes and
retaining walls upgraded by the HK Government and
private owners, the soil nailing technique has gained
popularity since the mid-1990s. Nowadays, soil nailing is
the most common slope stabilizing method in HK. More
than 200 slopes and retaining walls are upgraded using
soil nails each year (GEO 2008). A series of reports were
developed by Geotechnical Engineering Office of Hong
Kong Government and made available online at
http://www.cedd.gov.hk/eng/publications/geo_reports/inde
x.htm.

2.1 The Early Development Stage: From 1970-1990

One of its early significant applications was in 1972 for a

railroad project near Versailles, France, where an 18-m
high cut-slope in sand was stabilized using soil nails
(FHWA 2003). In Germany, the first use of a soil nail wall
(SNW) was in 1975 (FHWA 2003).
Because of cost-effectiveness and faster construction,
an increase in the use of soil nailing took place in France
and other areas in Europe. The early stage of
development is through two famous research programs:
The first major research program on SNWs was
undertaken in Germany from 1975 through 1981 by the a) Reinforcing mechanism of rock-bolting in NATM
University of Karlsruhe and the construction company (Clouterre 1991)
Bauer. This investigation program involved full-scale
testing of experimental walls with a variety of
configurations and the development of analysis
procedures to be used in design (Gässler and Gudehus,
1981); The second one is the Clouterre research program,
a pioneer work initiated in 1986 in France. This program
involved full-scale testing, monitoring of in-service
structures, and numerical simulations (Schlosser and
Unterreiner, 1991; Clouterre 1991). The limit equilibrium
design methods developed from these two research
programs, particularly the Clouterre research program,
are still used in today's practice throughout the world.

2.2 The Full Development Stage: From 1990-2010

With the establishment of design methods, soil nailing is

quickly becoming a popular retaining system throughout
the world. In the North America, soil nailing is applied to b) A typical soil nail wall with head plate flexural facing
highway construction through a series of efforts of the (GEO 2008)
U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway
Administration (FHWA). A 12 m high prototype SNW was
built as part of a demonstration project in 1984 followed Figure 1. A typical soil nail wall and its components
by the early application in 1989 to 1990 in different states
of the U.S. (FHWA 1998). A series of documents were
issued through FHWA’s Office of Research and 3 DESIGN OF A SOIL NAIL WALL
Development, including an English translation of Clouterre
program in 1993 and two design guidelines for SNWs Like many other retaining systems, the design of a SNW
(FHWA 1998; 2003). is to check its stability against various potential failure
Soil nailing is also becoming a popular retaining modes, including external, internal, and facing failures.
system in many parts of the world. Soil nailing technique
was introduced to Hong Kong (HK) in the 1980s. Along
3.1 Design of External Stability soils, the effective stress method should be used. In most
projects, pullout tests are suggested to validate the design
External failures refer to failures in global, sliding, and assumptions with design investigation tests or conduct
bearing stability, as shown in Figure 2. Global stability, suitability tests to test the sacrificial nails to failure. The
Figure 2a, refers to the overall stability of reinforced soil merits and limitations of these four pullout estimation
mass and occurs when the retained mass outweighs the methods are summarized in GEO (2009).
resistance provided by the soil slides along the critical
failure surface. Sliding stability, shown in Figure 2b, refers
to the horizontal mobilization of the entire reinforced soil
mass along the base of the retained system. Bearing
stability, shown in Figure 2c, occurs only when SNWs are
built over very soft soils.

a) A simple plane failure surface used by Sheahan and

Ho (2003)
Figure 2. Typical external failure modes in soil nail walls
(GEO 2008)

The current design practice uses the limit equilibrium

method for external stability. The nails are contribute to
overall stability mainly by increasing shear strength along
the slide surface and anti-slide effect due to pullout
resistances of nails. There are different failure surfaces
used in the design, like a plane failure surface, Figure 3a,
or a circular failure surface, Figure 3b. Based on an
investigation by Long et al. (1990), there is no significant
influence on the external stability from the shape of a
failure surface. For simplicity, a plane failure surface,
Figure 3a, can be used and programmed in a spreadsheet b) A circular failure surface used in CIRIA (2005)
for quick calculation.

3.2 Design of Internal Stability
Typical internal and facing failures are shown in Figure 4.
Once the load is calculated properly and the size of nail
tendon (rebar) can be selected properly to avoid the
breakage of nails, Figure 4d, and the bending/shear
failure of nails, Figure 4f. The most common internal
failure will be the pullout failure, Figure 4e, due to the
difficulties in accurately evaluating the pullout capacity of
nails and the complex grout-soil interface behaviour
(Milligan and Tei 1998). A total of four methods is
summarized for estimation of pullout resistance of nails
(GEO 2009): 1) The empirical methods based on soil
types and the Standard Penetration Test (SPT) blow
counts or pressuremeter values; 2) The pullout tests; 3)
The effective stress method; and 4) The undrained shear
strength method.
According to CIRIA (2005), the pullout resistance of
soil nails should be assessed first using the empirical
relations or other published data. For cohesive soils, the
upper bound and the lower bound pullout capacity can be
calculated using the undrained shear strength method and
the effective stress method, respectively. For granular
Figure 3. Different failure planes used for calculating
global stability of a soil nail wall
3.3 Design of Facing
There are currently three types of facings used in SNWs:
Shotcrete hard facing; head-plate flexural facing; and soft
facing. For shotcrete hard facing, both flexural and
punching shear failure modes can be developed. The
design guidelines from FHWA (1998 and 2003) listed the
detailed calculation formula and procedures for these
failure modes.
Based on field measurements on various in-service
nails, the recommendations from the Clouterre program
(1991) are still the most popular method to be used in the
estimation of nail load at the facing. The ratio between the
nail load at the facing over the maximum nail load varies
from 60% for nails with a spacing of 1 m to 100% for nails
with a spacing larger than 3 m. The maximum nail load is
normally located around the point intersecting with the
potential sliding surface and can be obtained from
software, like SNAILZ (Caltrans 2007) or GOLDNAIL
(Golder 1993).
Figure 4. Typical internal and facing failure modes in soil
nail walls (GEO 2008)
For the head-plate flexible facing, the head plate
should be sized for bearing capacity of soil and punching
through the facing. Due to the complex interaction
between the head plate and the flexible facing, a
simplified approach is normally used in the design. For a
shallow slope, the first method is to use Terzaghi’s
formula to estimate ultimate bearing capacity first and
then size the plate based on allowable bearing pressure
and the nail load at the facing. The second method
provided by HA68/94 (HA 1994) can be used to calculate
the size of head plates for flexible or soft facings, as
shown in Figure 5. According to GEO (2008), this
conservative lower bound solution is more applicable for
steep slopes up to 60° from the horizontal.
Figure 5. A local soil failure model for soil-nail head
design (GEO 2008)
The sizes of isolated nail head plates have been
standardized and recommended in the practice in HK
(GEO 2008). After determining the size of the head plate,
the thickness needs to be calculated to avoid
overstressing the head plate in bending. Normally the
bending overstress may not be a concern if a concrete
pad is used and can be skipped.
A potential failure of a three-dimensional block
between the nails can impose an out-of-balance force to
soft facing. This force can be conservatively estimated by
the force equilibrium of a two-wedge block, Figure 6a, or a
single wedge block, Figure 6b. The pore water pressures,
if applicable, can also be applied to the model above.
For soft non-structural facing, its primary function is
the erosion control through vegetation growth on the face
of the slope. Since non-structural facing is not very
effective against ravelling and does not contribute
significantly to the stabilization of soils between the nails.
This kind of facing should be limited to shallow slope
angles of up to about 30° to the horizontal unless more
detailed analysis is carried out (CIRIA 2005).
a) The two-wedge failure recommended by HA (1994)

b) The simple wedge failure proposed by Ruegger et al.
(2001)
Figure 6. Methods for estimating the out-of-balance forces
for flexible facing
4 THE ON-GOING NEW DEVELOPMENTS
During last four decades, soil nailing involves with
challenges during its applications. There are many on-
going developments. Below are just a few notable ones.
4.1 Risk-Based Design Concepts
In different regions or countries, different design methods
are used in design of SNWs. For example, the temporary
and permanent structures are recommended for highway
structures in the U.S. (FHWA 2003) and Canada (CHBDC
2000), where different Factors of Safety (FSs) or Load
and Resistance Factors (LRFs) are suggested depending
on the type of these structures. In UK and HK, the risk
concept is applied in soil nailed structure design. Different
reliability indices or safety levels are used according to
their consequences of failures, including threat to the
public's safety and economical loss. Based on risk levels,
different FSs or LRFs are applied in the design, for
example, the risk levels for slope failures are shown in
Table 1 and the minimum FSs against failures based on
different risk levels in Table 2 in HK (GEO 2008).
4.2 Different Facing Development
The facing provides lateral confinement for the retained
soil to avoid progressive shallow failure occurring between
the nails. A facing is usually required and its selection
needs to consider various factors, including site
constraints, environmental and aesthetic requirements.
Compared to traditional shotcrete facing developed from
the Clouterre program (1991) and adopted by FHWA
(1998; 2003), a significant development is advanced
through the introduction of head-plate flexural facing and
soft facing. For new cuts, the shotcrete facing is still the
most popular system. While for stabilizing existing slopes
or reinforcing existing retaining walls, flexural facings
using head plates in conjunction with coated metallic
meshes is a popular selection. Sometimes facing may not
be needed if the long-term stability can be guaranteed
without facing elements. In such cases, soft facing is used
to avoid deeper-seated slips and retain the vegetation
layer and topsoil and to prevent surface erosion. Materials
commonly used for soft facings are geogrids, cellular
geofabrics, geosynthetic sheet, light metallic mesh/fabric,
or degradable coir mats (CIRIA 2005).
4.3 WSD vs LRFD Methods
The current design practice is still primarily based on the
Working Stress Design (WSD) method where a series of
FSs are applied to ensure structural safety. For example,
the FHWA (2003) requires a minimum FS of 1.50 for
permanent SNWs and 1.35 for temporary SNWs for global
stability, and 1.50 and 1.30 for sliding stability,
respectively. However, it is not logical to apply the same
value of FS to varying conditions that involve different
degrees of uncertainties (Duncan 2000).
The Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD)
approach, which was initiated by structural engineers for
steel and concrete structural design in the 1970s,
considers variability in the design through LRFs. The
direct benefit of using the LRFD over the WSD is more
consistent safety levels under different design scenarios.
The LRFD has been gradually adopted in many
geotechnical engineering applications. Preliminary LRFs
for SNWs were directly converted to match the
corresponding FSs in the WSD in FHWA (1998). Due to
the fact that these factors are not reliability-based, these
factors were not adopted in its manual in 2003 (FHWA
2003).
Based on an SNW of 10 m in height in a
homogeneous soil, Babu and Singh (2011) proposed a
set of partial LRFs for the soil friction angle, unit weight,
and cohesion associated with different failure modes and
target reliability indices. Lazarte (2011) developed a
database on nail pullout resistance and calculate the
pullout resistance factor which corresponds to a target
reliability index of 2.33. Lazarte (2011) adopted the load
factors in AASHTO (2007) and used reliability theory to
develop a series of resistance factors for SNWs for
various external, internal, and structural failure modes.
The findings can be downloaded from this link
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_701.
pdf.
5 PROSPECTIVE APPLICATIONS IN HIGHWAY
CONSTRUCTION IN ONTARIO
Soil nailing has been successfully applied in various
ground conditions around the world. Due to its cost-
effectiveness and satisfactory performance, it has gained
popularity in Western Canada during last three decades.
The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO)
operates/maintains over 16,600 km of roadways
organized into various classifications, shown in Figure 7.
These roadways spread across the vast land of Ontario
and encounter a variety of ground conditions. Some of
these ground conditions are favorable for soil nailing, like
till deposits with a good stand-up time for drilling and
grouting operation.
 The easy set-up of plant and mobility of soil nailing
equipment is extremely attractive for highway
development and maintenance or repair work in remote
areas, particularly in Northern Ontario. It is expected that
soil nailing will become a popular retaining system in
Ontario in the future.
Figure 7. Map of the provincial roadway system in Ontario
6 FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Though it has been used for more than four decades
since its inception and first applications, soil nailing is still
treated as a relatively new technique. There are many
unknowns as the method is still developing to meet new
challenges. These changes can be climate change,
regional and local site conditions, and environmental
impacts, etc.
The uniform bond stress applied in practice is over
simplification of complex soil-nail interface
behavior. The interface behaviour is influenced by
many factors, including soil type, nail length,
roughness of nail surface, installation method, soil
arching effect, etc. More investigation is needed to
fully understand the behaviour for more realistic
modelling to generate cost-effective design.
Based on the records, soil nailing is very
satisfactory in its performance. Even though, some
incidents were reported, particularly after heavy
rainfalls. It is necessary to develop a rational
design method to consider rainfall or other effects.
Currently, there is a trend to apply the LRFD
method to replace the WSD method. In order to
calibrate design methods, more cases and
measurement are required to be accumulated from
practice. It will be an ongoing process.
There has been some ongoing research to develop
an efficient non-destructive testing method to meet
construction quality control and maintenance
requirements of SNWs (GEO 2002; Jayawickrama
et al. 2007). More efforts and supports are required
to implement it to replace the destructive field
testing used today.
There is limited research available for applications
of soil nailing in cold regions. The influence of the
freezing and thawing cycles is required for its
applications in cold regions, like Northern Ontario.
The soft facing is relatively new compared to the
hard structural facing. The design of the nail head
and the out-of-plane forces still requires further
investigation with verification of field measurement.
There is still no established method to
quantitatively consider the impact of vegetation on
SNWs.
There are many cases where a combination of
different systems are required in the same job site.
The interaction between soil nailing and other
retaining systems, like tieback anchors, is complex
and requires further investigation on the soil-
structure interaction and ground responses.
7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the
Ministry of Transportation of Ontario Highway
Infrastructure Innovations Funding Program of (MTO
HIIFP), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada (NSERC) Engage Program, and
DYWIDAG-Systems International Canada Ltd.
REFERENCES
th
AASHTO 2007. LRFD Bridge Design Specifications, 4
Edition, American Association of State Highway
and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C.
Babu, S.G. L. and Singh, V. P. 2011. Reliability-Based
Load and Resistance Factors for Soil-Nail Walls.
Can. Geotech. J., 48(6): 915−930.
CALTRANS 2007. A User’s Manual for the SNAILZ
Program, Ver. 2.02. California DOT, California.
CHBDC 2000. Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code,
CSA International.
CIRIA 2005. Report No. C637: Soil Nailing - Best Practice
Guidance, London, UK.
Clouterre 1991. French National Research Project
Clouterre - Recommendations Clouterre (English
Translation 1993). Report No. FHWA-SA-93-026,
US Department of Transportation, Washington,
D.C., USA.
Duncan, J.M. 2000. Factors of Safety and Reliability in
Geotechnical Engineering. J. Geotech.
Geoenvironmental Eng., 126(4): 307−316.
FHWA 1998. Manual for Design and Construction
Monitoring of Soil Nail Walls. Report FHWA-SA-
96-069R, Federal Highway Administration,
Washington, D.C.
FHWA 2003. Geotechnical Engineering Circular No. 7:
Soil Nail Walls. Report FHWA0-IF-03-017, Federal
Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.
Gässler, G. and Gudehus, G. 1981. Soil Nailing - Some
Aspects of a New Technique, Proc. 10th ICSMFE,
Vol. 3, Stockholm, Sweden, 665-670.
GEO 2002. GEO Report No. 133- Non-Destructive Tests
for Determining the Lengths of Installed Steel Soil
Nails. Government of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, Hong Kong
GEO 2008. Guide to Soil Nail Design and Construction.
Geotechnical Engineering Office, 97 p.
GEO 2009. GEO Report No. 264 - Review of the
Approach for Estimation of Pullout Resistance of
Soil Nails. The Government of Special
Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
Golder 1993. GOLDNAIL Soil Nailing Design Program.
Golder Associates, Seattle, Washington.
HA 1994. Design Methods of the Reinforcement of
Highway Slopes by Reinforced Soil and Soil
Nailing Technique (HA 68/94). Highway Agency,
UK.
Jayawickrama, P., Tinkey, Y., Gong, J. and Turner, J.
2007. Non-Destructive Evaluation of Installed Soil
Nails, Texas DOT Research Project 0-4484.
Larzate C.A. 2011. Proposed Specifications for LRFD
Soil-Nailing Design and Construction. NCHRP
Report 701, Transportation Research Board.
Long, J.H., Chow, E., Cording, E.T. and Sieczkowski,
W.J. 1990. Stability Analysis for Soil Nailed Walls.
ASCE, GSP No. 25: 676-691.
Milligan, G.W.E. and Tei, K. 1998. The Pull‐Out
Resistance of Model Soil Nails. Soil and
Foundations, 38(2):179‐190.
Ruegger, R., Flum, D. and Haller, B. 2001. Slope
Stabilisation with High Performance Steel Wire
Meshes in Combination with Nails and Anchors.
Proc Int Symp Earth Reinforcement, 675-678.
Schlosser, F. and Unterreiner, P. 1991. Soil Nailing in
France: Research and Practice, Proceedings of
the TRB Annual Meeting, Washington, DC
Sheahan, T.C. and Ho C.L. 2003. Simplified Trial Wedge
Method for Soil Nailed Wall Analysis. J. of Geot.
and Geoenviron. Eng., 129(2): 117-124.

.
Table 1 Examples of risk levels for slope failures in HK (modified from GEO 2008)
Examples Consequence-to-life
Category 1 Category 2 Category 3
(1) Failures affecting occupied buildings (e.g., residential,
educational, commercial or industrial buildings, bus
shelters, railway platforms).
(2) Failures affecting buildings storing dangerous goods.
(3) Failures affecting heavily used open spaces and
recreational facilities (e.g., sitting-out areas, playgrounds,
car parks).
(4) Failures affecting roads with high vehicular or pedestrian
traffic density.
(5) Failures affecting public waiting areas (e.g., bus stops,
petrol stations).
(6) Failures affecting country parks and lightly used open-air
recreational areas.
(7) Failures affecting roads with low traffic density.
(8) Failures affecting storage compounds (non-dangerous
goods).
Examples Economic Consequence
Category A Category B Category C
(1) Failures affecting buildings, which could cause
excessive structural damage.
(2) Failures affecting essential services, which could cause
loss of that service for an extended period.
(3) Failures affecting rural or urban trunk roads or roads of
strategic importance.
(4) Failures affecting essential services, which could cause
loss of that service for a short period.
(5) Failures affecting rural (A) or primary distributor roads
which are not sole accesses.
(6) Failures affecting open-air car parks.
 (7) Failures affecting rural (B), feeder, district distributor
and local distributor roads which are not sole accesses.
(8) Failures affecting country parks.

Table 2 The minimum factor of safety against failures for a ten-year return period rainfall recommended in HK (modified
from GEO 2008)
Consequence-to-life Category 1 Category 2 Category 3
Economic Consequence
New Soil-Nailed Cut
Category A 1.4 1.4 1.4
Category B 1.4 1.2 1.2
Category C 1.4 1.2 > 1.0
Notes:
(1) In addition to a minimum factor of safety of 1.4 for a ten-year return period rainfall, a slope in the consequence-to-
life Category 1 should have a factor of safety of at least 1.1 for the predicted worst groundwater
conditions.
(2) The factors of safety given in this Table are recommended minimum values. Higher factors of safety might be
warranted in particular situations in respect of loss of life and economic loss.

Existing Cut Slopes

Consequence-to-life Category 1 Category 2 Category 3
Minimum Factor of Safety 1.2 1.1 > 1.0

Notes:
(1) These factors of safety are appropriate only where rigorous geological and geotechnical studies have been
carried out (which should include a thorough examination of maintenance history, groundwater records, rainfall
records and any monitoring records), where the slope has been standing for a considerable time, and where the
loading conditions, the groundwater regime, and the basic form of the modified slope remain substantially the
same as those of the existing slope. Otherwise, the standards specified for new slopes given in Table 5.4
(GEO 2008) should be adopted.
(2) The factors of safety given in this Table are recommended minimum values. Higher factors of safety might be
warranted in particular situations in respect of loss of life and economic loss.

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