I’ve spent nearly twenty years in the ground — boreholes, trial pits, desk studies, risk assessments, planning submissions.

And over that time, one issue kept coming up again and again.

In construction, ground risk is one of the biggest sources of cost and uncertainty. Get it right early — before land is acquired, before planning is submitted — and you avoid some of the most expensive surprises in a project.

Most of those risks could be entirely foreseeable.

But for the majority of small and medium-sized developments, that early-stage ground insight simply isn’t there.

Not because the data doesn’t exist.

But because the economics of traditional geotechnical consulting don’t work at that stage.

The infrastructure exception

On large infrastructure projects — rail, highways, energy, major commercial — early-stage ground risk assessment is built into the process.

Frameworks like Network Rail’s GRIP, NEC contract structures, and early contractor involvement all ensure geotechnical input from the concept stage. Ground risk optioning and comparative assessment are standard practice.

And it works well.

But that’s infrastructure.

A housing developer buying a 2-acre greenfield site in the East Midlands, or a planning consultant advising on three commercial options in the North East, operates in a completely different environment.

The consultant’s dilemma

Here’s the reality most geotechnical consultants will recognise:

A proper high-level desk study — even using publicly available data from the British Geological Survey, Environment Agency, Historic England, and the Mining Remediation Authority — takes one to two days of a qualified engineer’s time.

At £500–£800 per day, that’s £500–£1,600 in professional fees before a report is even written.

For a client asking a relatively simple question — “Is this site broadly suitable?” — that’s a significant cost.

So the negotiation begins.

Fees get squeezed to the point where the work is effectively done at cost, or the work isn’t commissioned at all.

In many cases, consultants take this on as a calculated decision — treating the desk study as a loss-leader to secure downstream work.

And that downstream pipeline can be substantial — detailed desk studies, environmental assessments, ground investigation, geotechnical reporting, and design support across the full lifecycle of a project.

But it’s still a bet. Not every site proceeds. Not every client returns. And in the meantime, valuable engineering time is spent on low-margin work.

The client’s dilemma

From the client’s side, the challenge is just as real.

A developer assessing multiple sites before committing to one needs some level of ground risk insight on each. But commissioning full desk studies across several options is rarely viable at that stage.

So decisions are often made with limited or no structured ground risk information.

Most experienced consultants would recommend a phased approach: rapid first-pass screening, detailed desk study on shortlisted sites, intrusive investigation on the selected site.

In principle, this is exactly right. But in practice, even that first-pass screening takes time, resource, and cost — particularly across multiple sites. And those demands compete directly with higher-value, higher-priority work for consulting teams.

An industry under structural pressure

The wider context makes this harder. The UK geotechnical and ground engineering consulting market has seen significant consolidation over the past decade. Large multidisciplinary practices now dominate infrastructure and major commercial work.

These firms are structured for scale, with pricing and delivery models aligned to large projects.

At the other end of the market, independent consultancies operate with smaller teams and limited capacity. A team of four or five chartered engineers can’t easily absorb multiple low-margin desk studies without affecting delivery elsewhere.

The delivery model hasn’t changed: one engineer, one site, one dataset at a time, one report. And that model struggles to serve early-stage feasibility decisions at the price and speed the market actually needs.

The gap isn’t technical. It’s economic.

Why I built GeoScreen

GeoScreen came from a simple question: what if early-stage ground risk screening — the work that typically takes a qualified engineer a day or two — could be done in 90 seconds?

Not by cutting corners. Not by removing professional judgement. But by automating the parts of the process that are repetitive and data-driven: data gathering, hazard identification, structured assessment, report generation.

Using the same publicly available datasets every geotechnical consultant relies on. Applying the same logic a competent engineer would follow. And embedding automated QA checks before delivery.

The result is a Tier 1 ground risk screening report: ten geohazard RAG ratings, twelve annotated map figures, structured and consistent risk summaries.

Delivered in around 90 seconds, for £150 + VAT.

The same data. The same underlying logic. A different delivery model.

Where GeoScreen fits

GeoScreen is not a replacement for a professional desk study. It’s not designed to support planning submission. It doesn’t replace the judgement of a Chartered Geotechnical Engineer on complex sites.

What it does is enable better decisions earlier — for developers assessing multiple acquisition options, planning consultants advising on site selection, and land agents moving quickly ahead of bids or offers.

It provides a structured, defensible first-pass view of ground risk at a price point and turnaround time that makes sense at feasibility stage.

For projects that move forward, fully authored professional desk studies are available through Magnum GSI Ltd or your preferred Geotechnical Consultant — compliant with BS 5930:2015 and signed by a Chartered Engineer.

We’re also developing a Tier 2 offering: automated reporting reviewed and verified by a Chartered Geotechnical Engineer, bridging the gap where more scrutiny is required.

A different way of delivering the same insight

The ground doesn’t change. But the way we help people understand it can.

GeoScreen is fundamentally about making early-stage ground risk assessment commercially viable — not just technically possible. Because better early decisions don’t just improve individual projects. They improve how the industry works.

— Tristan Morgan BSc(Hons) EurGeol CGeol FGS AMICE | UK Registered Ground Engineering Specialist | Director, Magnum GSI Ltd

GeoScreen™ is an automated geotechnical ground risk screening platform available at geoscreen.uk.