Norken has fully equipped ma­te­ri­als test­ing lab­o­ra­tory that pro­vides sup­port to our con­sult­ing and field in­spec­tion ser­vices while pro­vid­ing foren­sic and test­ing ser­vices to our clients re­gion wide. Strin­gent qual­ity as­sur­ance and qual­ity con­trol pro­ce­dures pro­vide re­sults en­gi­neers can rely on as they con­sider rec­om­men­da­tions, prod­ucts and ma­te­ri­als to be used for con­struc­tion or re­pair pro­jects.

Our range of ser­vices in­clude:-

Site In­ves­ti­ga­tions; where we in­ves­ti­gate soils and ma­te­ri­als, do con­di­tion sur­veys for road pave­ments such as Vi­sual In­spec­tions, De­flec­tion Sur­veys, Sur­face Rough­ness, Dy­namic Cone Pen­etrom­e­ter (DCP) Sound­ing and Cor­ing. We do Test­ing of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als for Roads and Build­ing Works and Pave­ment eval­u­a­tion and de­sign.

Sam­ples re­trieved from the field are brought to Norken Soils & Ma­te­ri­als Lab­o­ra­tory at Dagoretti for test­ing. The lab­o­ra­tory is fully equipped to un­der­take var­i­ous tests in­clud­ing;

  1. Soils and gravel tests;
  2. Ag­gre­gate tests;
  3. As­phalt and bi­tu­men tests; and
  4. Con­crete tests.

The de­part­ment re­cently ac­quired a fully au­to­mated tri­ax­ial ma­chine for de­ter­mi­na­tion of soil shear strength. The au­toma­tion of the test­ing process and re­port­ing in­creases the ac­cu­racy of the lab­o­ra­tory re­sults by elim­i­nat­ing human er­rors. The equip­ment is the first of its kind in the coun­try

The fully au­to­mated tri­ax­ial has the ca­pa­bil­ity to carry out the fol­low­ing tests:

  1. Un­con­sol­i­dated undrained (UU);
  2. Con­sol­i­dated undrained (CU); and
  3. Con­sol­i­dated drained (CD).

Apart from the in-house test­ing, we also carry out com­mer­cial test­ing for other con­sul­tants and con­trac­tors, also offer train­ing in ma­te­ri­als test­ing.

Eng .Stephen Ndinika

Head of Trans­porta­tion En­gi­neer­ing & Ma­te­r­ial Test­ing De­part­ment