How do you check soakaway assessment claims in Qardho?

A soakaway assessment claim in Qardho is only as good as the evidence behind it. Ask the contractor for the trial pit location, the soakage test record and the sizing calculation before any excavation for the soakaway itself begins. Without those, the assessment is a verbal assurance, and the risk of ineffective effluent dispersal sits with the client after handover.

What does a competent soakaway assessment look like?

Competency means the assessor can show a method: dig a trial pit, fill it with water, watch the level fall, and record it. A competent assessor also asks where the effluent goes in the wet season and how close the pit is to any well or water point. Unverified soakaway assessment competency risks Qardho builds through a simple mechanism. A bidder who has never run a soakage test will size the pit by eye or copy a neighbour's soakaway, and the pit may be too small or sit in the wrong layer. Ground conditions vary over short distances, so a design copied from another site proves nothing. Ask the municipal engineer's office what records, if any, it has for the plot, and treat the answer as a starting point, not a substitute for a test on the plot.

How do you detect an unverified capability in a Qardho bid?

Read the bid for a method statement, not a promise. A bid that names the test pit depth, the water volume used and how the fall was timed shows the bidder has done this before. A bid that says only that the soakaway will be built to standard gives nothing to check. Ask for one recent soakage test record from another plot, with the location and date. If the bidder cannot produce one, that alone does not prove incompetence, but it means the client must supervise the test directly or appoint someone who will. Walk a recent site the bidder has finished and ask the owner whether the soakaway has ever overflowed after heavy rain. Set the test as a hold point in the programme so the soakaway excavation does not start until the record is signed off.

What should the soakage test record contain?

It should show the pit dimensions, the depth to the bottom, the water level at the start and after each interval, and the time of each reading. General practice is to dig a pit below the intended soakaway invert, fill it, and time the fall over several hours, but confirm the depth, intervals and acceptance criteria against the project's specification or engineer. The record should also note the soil seen in the pit walls, the depth of any rock or hard layer, and the distance to wells, water points and boundaries. Keep a copy with the as-built drawings. At handover, the same record lets the next owner re-test the pit and compare the result.

What to do next

Write the soakage test into the contract as a hold point: trial pit, timed water test, written record, signed before excavation. Ask three bidders to submit a sample record with their bid so you can compare methods, not promises. Then ask the Qardho municipal engineer's office what records it may hold for the plot before you approve the design.