“Combining EN 1996 & EN 1997: Masonry and Geotechnical Measurement Techniques for Infrastructure Works”

When you’re working on infrastructure projects—think seawalls in Kuwait or retaining structures along a new highway in Qatar—it pays to master both the masonry rules of EN 1996 and the ground-interaction guidelines of EN 1997. By combining these two Eurocodes, you’ll cover everything from blockwork walls to underpinning pads, ensuring your quantities capture both the built elements and their subsoil context.

Start with EN 1996, which lays out how to measure masonry units, mortar joints and reinforcement cages. Picture a piled retaining wall: EN 1996 guides you on counting standard blocks, special shapes like quoins or jambs, and the exact mortar thickness between courses. You’ll also learn to include bed joint reinforcement lengths and categorize open-joint regions for later pointing work. Breaking down your take-off into block counts, mortar volumes and reinforcement lengths keeps your bill of quantities transparent and scalable across different wall heights and thicknesses.

Next, bring in EN 1997’s geotechnical framework. For foundations, it tells you how to measure excavation volumes by depth, footing pad sizes by plan area, and backfill materials by compacted volume—including bulking factors for sand or gravel. When dealing with piled foundations, EN 1997 lays out how to record pile lengths, diameters and casing allowances. If you’ve ever puzzled over how to account for trial pits or soakaway trenches in your estimates, this code has you covered.

What makes the combined approach powerful is consistency. When your quantities reference EN 1996’s block classifications and EN 1997’s excavation categories, everyone speaks the same language—engineers, contractors and clients. That reduces bid-day headaches and post-award disputes over what’s “in scope.”