Gloucester’s historic docks and cathedral close sit on a complex mix of alluvial silts and Triassic mudstones. Urban redevelopment here rarely gets a clean, textbook geology. The city has expanded over buried channels of the Severn, leaving pockets of soft organic clay and loose gravel lenses that standard boreholes can easily miss. That is where seismic tomography earns its place. By measuring the travel time of seismic waves through the subsurface, we build a continuous 2D or 3D velocity profile that reveals hidden boundaries, weathered zones, and depth to competent bedrock. In a city with Gloucester’s layered Quaternary cover, having a geophysical cross-section before committing to intrusive work saves time and avoids surprises during excavation. We frequently pair it with a CPT campaign when the site demands both high-resolution stratigraphy and soil strength parameters for foundation design.
A seismic velocity section reveals what a borehole log cannot—the continuity of layers between points.
