Surface Search Inc.

Surface Search Inc.

Surface Search Inc. specializes in providing environmental and engineering geophysical services using a variety of leading edge technologies. Surface Search sets the industry standard for providing customers with accurate, reliable, easy-to-understand information about the shallow subsurface (0-100 meters). Since 1991, the company has been solving a wide range of environmental and engineering
problems through the use of geophysics, having built up and maintained a broad international base of satisfied clients from the oil & gas, engineering and mining industries, and governmental agencies. All have benefitted from what places Surface Search above its numerous imitators: knowledgeable, highly experienced personnel, whose foremost concern is meeting the individual needs of each customer as quickly and effectively as possible.


This blend of dedication and expertise, unique to Surface Search, provides results which have saved time, resources and money for customers on four continents. Backing these results, and ensuring their usefulness to our clients' needs, is our reputation for dependable service at every stage of the job, from the acquisition of data through to its final presentation. In order to find out what lies under the ground, where it
is, and how to act on that information, Surface Search is a world-wide leader and an obvious first choice.


Surface Search keeps its corporate vision fixed firmly on its customer, and on the service it attempts to provide that customer: a greater insight into the subsurface environment so that clients may reduce the risks involved in undertaking a prospective engineering project. The company believes in the value of foresight, and operates on the premise that the benefits of using their services to contain risk greatly outweigh the
costs encountered in potential engineering and construction problems--problems that Surface Search might well have seen beforehand. Surface Search wants its clients to stand on the firmer ground that its services provide.


These services are numerous. Surface Search began by establishing a proficiency in the use of ground penetrating radar (GPR), at the time a new means of mapping the shallow subsurface. In 1995, Surface Search broadened its GPR base to include procedures such as electromagnetic induction, magnetometry and resistivity profiling.


Surface Search personnel have backgrounds in geophysics, geology, and geomorphology and each have extensive experience with field operations in such diverse international locations as the United States, Mexico, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, French Guiana, Australia, and Arctic Canada. Hundreds of contracts have been completed for a host of major international environmental, engineering, and resource companies.


Ground Penetrating Radar


Surface Search is unrivaled in the application of GPR. Today it is acknowledged as a world-wide leader in this field, and has been a true innovator in the commercial development of radar's potential:


first company in Canada totally dedicated to providing GPR services; first company to develop successful river-crossing methods with GPR, incorporating equipment specially designed and constructed in-house; first company to interpret and display GPR data in a manner most useful to commercial clients.


Surface Search's ongoing relationship with universities and other experts means that they will remain on the leading edge of GPR technology.


Services Provided:


electromagnetic surveying (EM) -- EM 31, 38, & 61; magnetometry; resistivity; GPR - High Resolution 250 - 1200 MHz; GPR - Low Resolution 12.5 - 200 MHz; sub-bottom profiling; differential Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology.


Surface Search technicians, drawing selectively from this range of state-of-the-art methods, can acquire geophysical data rapidly, over large areas, with few hindrances. All procedures are affordable, make virtually no impact on the environment, and furnish quick and accurate results which are presented to the client in a comprehensible, readily usable format.


Surface Search values its customers above all else. It is around the customer, not around technology, that the company is established and run; our clients dictate where and for what purpose we apply our technological expertise. Here are the services they most often ask us to perform:


Geotechnical and general engineering applications:


profile bedrock elevation; locate voids beneath concrete and asphalt surfaces; detect rebar in concrete; conduct bathymetry (water depth) profiling; locate utilities; profile soil stratigraphy (in 2D or 3D); detect and profile permafrost features; muskeg and ice depth/thickness profiling.


Assessments related to environmental engineering:


conduct studies of contaminated groundwater; determine presence of hydrocarbon contamination; detect and map out buried metallic objects (e.g. underground storage tanks, drums and other metallic debris); delineation of soil types to match potential flow paths; conduct landfill studies; locate buried building foundations; undertake soil surveys.


Pipeline design:


profile bedrock (on land and beneath aquatic environments); delineate sand/gravel deposits; locate buried utilities, voids, or disturbed ground conditions; profile muskeg thickness; estimate rock excavation volumes; detect and profile permafrost features.


Pipeline river crossings:


profile bedrock elevation;
locate channel scours within bedrock or glacial till formations; detect and measure the thickness of sand, gravel and boulder layers; detect large fracture areas within bedrock; detect karst/void features within bedrock; provide information about depth of cover over existing pipeline river crossings.


Mining:


profile bedrock elevations beneath placer sand and gravel sediments; detect old mine workings;
conduct studies of contaminated groundwater; model deposition facies within placer sand and gravel deposits;estimate sand and gravel volumes.


Archaeology:


detect buried grave sites; map out disturbed ground conditions; detect metallic objects; locate buried building foundations

Company Details

Year Established: 1991

Company Information

Paul Tarrant
Title: President
Area of Responsibility: Management Executive
Telephone: (403) 531-9720
Fax: (403) 294-1162
Email: Click Here

Products

Environmental Products And Services

Ground Penetrating Radar (gpr).
Surface Search Inc.'s Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), provides high resolution geophysical imaging of the shallow subsurface. This ability to investigate and map the subsurface using continuous, two dimensional profiles is advantageous to many engineering and environmental applications. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) has been used in a wide variety of applications. Investigations of natural features include mapping the distribution of sand, gravel, and boulder horizons, profiling the bedrock surface and detecting fractures and fault zones. Muskeg, ice thickness and permafrost can be mapped. Most man made disturbances are easily detected using GPR; including pipes, tanks, landfills, graves, old mine workings, and buried foundations. GPR data acquisition is extremely portable and large areas can be investigated in a single day. Accurate survey positioning for large investigations may be facilitated using a proprietary Global Positioning System - GPR interface. Investigations can be performed through water, ice and snow. Data can be recorded while walking through a narrow hand cut line in treed areas, or the system can be used from a jet boat or zodiac to profile the subsurface beneath rivers. Surface Search has mobilized into projects by helicopter, boat, skidoo, ATV's and on foot. The entire operation can be conducted with very little or no environmental impact.

Services

Engineering And Environmental Geophysics Complete geophysical services from survey design to interactive interpretation and presentation for GPR, ERT, EM, Seismic Refraction and Reflection, and other near surface geophysics.