Canyon loam, logged sample by sample
CHEN ZHAOVEX INC reads a site from the bottom of the trench to the top of the bid document. The practice works out of 3008 E Canyon Crest Dr, Spanish Fork - 84660-8935, United States (US), and it keeps a sample yard where every core, tray and takeoff sheet is filed against the same plot number. Clients send drawings and boring logs; the yard sends back measured answers.
Soil report review, core sample coordination and construction takeoffs are the three tools kept closest at hand, and each one feeds the next with the same measured facts. See the six services we run from this yard
The practice is deliberately small so that a report crossing the desk is read by the person who will later sign the estimate built on it.
A takeoff built on a soil report nobody read is a guess with a spreadsheet around it. CHEN ZHAOVEX INC was formed to stop that drift. Every project enters the yard as a stack of documents, is reduced to a layer model with measured depths, and leaves as an estimate whose lines can each be pointed back to a page, a sample or a photograph. Roofers, civil contractors, general builders and property owners arrive with very different paperwork and leave with the same shape of answer: quantities, assumptions, exclusions and a short list of questions that must be answered before ground is broken.
The work is technical but plain spoken. There are no sales visits and no bundled packages. A client pays for reading, measuring and organising, and the deliverables are documents that a bank, a plan reviewer or a bid committee can follow without a translator.
Each line below is a service we run from this yard. The board is ticked by hand in the order the work usually arrives, not in the order of importance.
We read the geotechnical report the way a surveyor reads a plat: bearing capacities, groundwater notes, expansive soils and the recommendations that are easy to skip. The review ends with a plain list of which site conditions change the scope and which ones the drawings already handle. If a report is too thin for the work being priced, we say so in writing before an estimate is built.
Samples are booked, logged and tracked so that a laboratory result never arrives without a location. We coordinate drilling windows, label every tube and tray, and keep a chain of record from the rig to the bench. On repeat visits the earlier cores are pulled from the rack and placed beside the new ones so a changing stratum is visible rather than inferred.
Takeoffs cover excavation, import and export, footings, slabs, retaining walls and the site work around them. Quantities are extracted plate by plate from the drawing set and checked against the layer model rather than copied from a previous job. Where drawings disagree, the conflict is listed instead of quietly averaged into a middle number.
An estimate is assembled from measured quantities, current local pricing and a written set of assumptions. Labour, equipment, haul distance, disposal and contingency are separated so a client can see exactly what a change would move. The finished document is short enough to read in one sitting and detailed enough to defend in a bid review.
A walkover turns a drawing into a place. We record access widths, utility positions, slope, stockpile space, soil staining and the small obstructions that no plan set shows. Photographs are numbered against the plot grid, and anything that would force a change to the quantities is flagged the same day rather than discovered on the first morning of work.
Before a bid leaves the office it is checked against the instruction to bidders, the addenda and the specification sections that quietly change the scope. We compare the estimate back to the bid form, confirm alternates and unit prices, and produce a short noting of risks for the signer. The check is the last thing we do, and it is the reason clients come back.
Documents arrive, and the first pass is always a reading pass: what is being built, what the ground is reported to be, and where the two do not meet. A plot number is assigned and a layer model is started on the bench, so that the same depth reference is used by the reviewer, the sampler and the estimator. Nothing is priced until the ground is understood.
The second pass is measurement. Takeoffs are produced from the drawings and reconciled against the soil information, and any gap is written down as a question with a name attached. The third pass is the estimate itself, followed by the bid document check when the project is going out to a committee or an owner.
Clients typically hold three documents at the end: a review memo, a quantity sheet and a priced estimate. Each one carries the same plot number and the same date. If something changes on site, the change is written into the next revision rather than remembered in conversation.
The practice serves residential builders working on difficult lots, small civil contractors who need a second set of eyes on a quantity sheet, design offices that want soil information translated for a client, and owners who are about to sign a contract they cannot fully price. The scale of the job matters less than the clarity of the drawings.
Because the yard keeps physical samples, a question about a layer can usually be answered by lifting a tray rather than ordering another hole. That habit of keeping evidence is the core of the practice, and it is why the filing wall in the back room is treated as a working tool rather than an archive.
We take on a limited number of projects each month, and we take them in the order the paperwork is complete.
We work from one controlling sheet index. When revisions arrive, the index is updated first and quantities are re-run only against the changed plates. This avoids the common trap of a set that looks current but contains one stale detail.
Groundwater depth changes the cost of almost every excavation item. Reports written in a wet season are read with that in mind, and the assumption used in the estimate is written plainly so an owner can see the risk it carries.
Spoil does not disappear. Haul distance, load limits and disposal fees are treated as measured quantities rather than allowances, because they are the line most often understated in a hand-built estimate.
Every core, tray and photograph carries the plot number, the date and the initials of the person who handled it. Years later, a client can ask about a layer and be shown the exact sample.
If a project is stuck between a soil report nobody can translate and an estimate nobody trusts, the yard is built for exactly that. Send whatever is on hand, even if it is incomplete. We will tell you what is missing and what it will take to answer the question properly.
Estimates and scheduling are handled by email at estimates@zhaovex.mom or by telephone at +15059900823. Visits to the sample yard are by appointment.
CHEN ZHAOVEX INC opens its winter walkover calendar, and sites with complete drawing sets are booked first.