Excavation

A cubic yard of soil weighs roughly 3,000 pounds. The average car weighs about 4,000. When a trench wall fails, it does not slowly slough — it releases in seconds, and a worker standing in five feet of unprotected excavation is buried under more than a ton of material before they can take two steps. That is why I tell every contractor I work with that excavation is not a routine activity. It is a controlled high‑energy operation with a regulatory framework that exists because