Inventor & Development Team
The use of Movement Gauges has been pioneered by Robert Thorniley-Walker MA(Oxon) CEng FICE FIStructE MIHT MIHBC, principal of RT-W Consulting Engineers and then director at Structural & Civil Consultants Ltd. Robert is one of a score or so of Chartered Engineers who is also a Member of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation.
From his time as Technical Director at Travers Morgan, he realised that even the three pin system to monitor cracks with verniers to fractions of a millimetre often failed to identify how vertical cracks were related to foundation movements. In private practice and working mostly with Listed Buildings, Robert devised and then developed the concept of Movement Gauges. The intention was to allow advice on foundation issues to be given based on firm data that could be collected in a cost effective manner.
The Future
The Case Studies give examples of buildings where relative movement is 6mm in the length of a 6m room in a lime mortar building with little cracking. Another example is given of a building which all parties were "certain" would need underpinning, yet the Movement Gauges indicated no significant movement at all. From these, it is apparent that the Movement Gauges will bring in a new chapter in the science of building/foundation interaction.
The aim is to learn to identify the characteristics of foundation movements. Better knowledge of actual movements can then allow results from just a few weeks of monitoring to be used to predict movement over the rest of the year, and thus cut monitoring periods in many instances.