ABSTRACT
This chapter dedicates to the operations carried out at a construction site for its geotechnical characterization. It also devotes to soil stiffness characterization. When dealing with densely populated areas, geotechnical characterization reports for nearby constructions can generally be found, which represent important sources to be collected and checked. Essentially, it consists of inducing freezing of the water present in a given volume of soil prior to sampling, in order to then collect the sample with a rotary advancing sampler, such as those used for rock masses. An alternative to the use of soil freezing is the so-called Gel-Push sampling technique, also developed in Japan, and whose first application occurred there in 2004. Finally, with the exception of the Standard penetration test, in situ tests do not allow direct identification of the nature of the tested soil as they do not involve any soil sampling.
