Pad Construction

Structural fill sections for commercial, industrial, and warehouse buildings — subgrade prepared and proof-rolled, select fill placed in controlled lifts, and the finished pad held to plan elevation and dimensions with survey conformance shot before handoff. Pad geometry includes the oversize the foundation design calls for, so the edge of the building never sits on the edge of the compacted zone. Built to the geotechnical specification and verified by your testing firm as lifts go in.

Pads for transformers, switchgear, compressors, generators, tanks, and skidded packages on substation, compression, and industrial sites. Equipment pads carry tight elevation and footprint tolerances and dense underground congestion — conduit, grounding, and drainage arrive before or with the pad — so we build them around the coordination, protecting what is already in the ground and sequencing lifts with the other trades instead of over them.

Select fill imported to the specification the geotechnical engineer defines — typically limits on plasticity index and gradation — from sources submitted and approved before the first load crosses the scale. We manage the supply chain as part of the scope: source qualification, haul cycles matched to placement rate, and stockpile handling that keeps approved material from being contaminated by everything else moving on the site.

Every lift conditioned into its specified moisture range before compaction — water added and mixed into dry West Texas material, wet soils disced and dried when weather loads them up — then compacted to the required percentage of Proctor density. Lifts are held to the thickness the specification allows, not the thickness the schedule wishes for, because density testing samples the lift the technician can reach, and a thick lift hides its middle.

The deliverable is not just dirt at elevation — it is a documented pad: proof-roll observed, density tests passed lift by lift, finished surface shot against plan elevations, and the record set organized so your geotechnical engineer can issue whatever acceptance the project requires. The concrete crew forms on it the day they arrive, and nobody spends a week reconstructing what happened under the surface.

Because the pad carries requirements the mass grading never sees: imported material with plasticity and gradation limits, tighter lift and moisture control, denser testing cadence, survey tolerances measured in hundredths, and a formal acceptance at the end. Some grading contractors execute all of that well; the failure mode is treating the pad as the last few feet of the same operation. Whether the pad rides inside a larger earthwork contract or stands alone, it should be scoped, priced, and verified as its own deliverable — with its specification, testing plan, and handoff condition written down. That is how we bid it either way, so the number you compare is the pad you will actually receive.

Select fill is soil that meets defined limits — most commonly a plasticity index cap and a gradation band — so it compacts predictably and stays put once compacted. Native expansive clays swell and shrink with moisture, and a slab riding on them moves with the seasons. The pad section replaces or caps that behavior: reactive material comes out or gets treated, and the select fill above it provides a stable, low-movement platform consistent with the potential vertical rise the foundation was designed around. The specification belongs to your geotechnical engineer; our job is sourcing material that genuinely meets it, submitting it for approval before hauling, and placing it so the tested product matches the approved sample.

Three checks, three parties. The geotechnical engineer sets the section: strip depth, treatment, select fill specification, lift thickness, density, and moisture range. An independent testing laboratory tests each lift in the field — density and moisture — and reports to the owner or GC, with failing lifts reworked and retested before the next one goes down. Survey confirms the finished pad against plan elevation and footprint. TerraTek executes and keeps the record straight: placement logs, test locations, and conformance shots organized into a handoff package. On projects that require it, that package is what your engineer relies on to issue a pad acceptance letter — we build so that letter is easy to write.

Either works; the economics usually favor bundling. As a standalone scope we take a rough-graded site, build the pad, and hand off a documented surface. But a pad's quality depends on the subgrade under it and gets proven by the concrete on top of it — so combining stabilization, pad, and concrete under one contractor closes the two handoffs where pad disputes actually live. One team owns subgrade through slab, one schedule covers cure and pour windows, and there is no gap where a soaked pad becomes someone else's fault. For full-site programs, turnkey site development extends the same logic across every scope.

The geotechnical report is the essential document — it defines the pad section, treatment requirements, select fill specification, and compaction targets. Add the foundation plan or pad layout with finish elevations and dimensions, the grading plan for context, and the schedule you are protecting. If select fill sources are constrained in your area, say so early; haul distance moves pad economics more than any other variable. We return a proposal with the section priced as specified, source assumptions stated, testing coordination included, and the handoff documentation defined. Send it through our contact page — pads are usually on the critical path, and pricing them early keeps them off it.