Grading (engineering)

This article is about earthwork. For lumber grading, see Lumber § Grades and standards.

Section through railway track and foundation showing the sub-grade.

Grading in civil engineering and landscape architectural construction is the work of ensuring a level base, or one with a specified slope, for a construction work such as a foundation, the base course for a road or a railway, or landscape and garden improvements, or surface drainage. The earthworks created for such a purpose are often called the sub-grade or finished contouring (see diagram).

Transportation

In the case of gravel roads and earthworks for certain purposes, grading forms not just the base but the cover and surface of the finished construction, and is often called finished grade.

Process

Modern road grader

It is often done using heavy machinery like bulldozers and excavators to roughly prepare an area and then using a grader for a finer finish.

Environmental design

In the environmental design professions grading and regrading are a specifications and construction component in landscape design, landscape architecture, and architecture projects. It is used for buildings or outdoor amenities regarding foundations and footings, slope terracing and stabilizing, aesthetic contouring, and directing surface runoff drainage of stormwater and domestic/irrigation runoff flows.

See also

• Cut (earthmoving)
• Cut-and-cover
• Cut and fill
• Fill dirt

• Grade (slope) (civil engineering and geographical term)
• Grading
• Regrading

• Slope (mathematical term)
• Subgrade
• Trench