Machine-control grading & earthwork · Oxley Bend · Harlow Crossing · est. 2001
Every yard of dirt, accounted for.
Otterbank Earthworks models your site in three dimensions before a machine touches it, balances cut against fill so the spoils stay home, and grades to the model at ±0.04 ft. The mass-haul diagram rides on the quote — earthwork priced without one is a coin flip with a deposit.
Since 2001
The record, before the pitch
Figures off finished jobs, each with an as-built behind it. In a trade where the surprises are buried, arithmetic is the only advertising that holds up.
What the machines do
Four trades, one model
Site modeling & layout
A drone survey and a lidar walk become a three-dimensional model of your ground, with cut and fill calculated to the yard before the quote is written. The model goes in the dozer; the dozer cuts to the model; nobody grades to a stringline from 1987.
01
Cut-and-fill mass haul
Balancing a site is the difference between trucking four hundred loads and trucking forty. We sequence cuts and fills so the dirt walks across the site instead of riding around the county, and the haul diagram shows where every yard went.
02
Structural fill & compaction
Fill placed in eight-inch lifts, moisture-corrected, rolled to 95 percent standard Proctor and tested lift by lift. Under floor slabs we take it to 98 — one extra pass per lift that buys a decade of floor that never knows it floats.
03
Rock excavation & trenching
When the model says basalt, the hammer goes on the quote at a stated hourly rate. Utility trenches are swept, located, shored to the tables, bedded on stone and closed with a rock log and a density record per metre.
04
The sequence
From lidar walk to as-built
Five passes over the same ground, each one cheaper than the mistake it prevents. The order never changes; only the distances between the steps do.
The lidar walk
Drone up, rover out, soils pulled where the story is unclear. Two hours on site, a week of arithmetic off it.
The model & the number
Cut, fill, haul and balance calculated to the yard. The quote carries the mass-haul diagram, not a unit price times a hope.
Locate & perimeter
Tickets filed, lines flagged, silt fence and a stabilized entrance in before the first pass — the county checks the edges first, and so do we.
Cut, fill, compact
Machines on model control, lifts placed and tested at eight inches, water handled as we go so nothing gets made twice.
The as-built
Finish surfaces verified against the design model, density logs bound, and the whole record handed over with the invoice.
Rock country
Basalt is a schedule item, not a surprise
The Oxley bench sits on basalt, and the model tells us where it starts before the bucket does. Hammer time is quoted at a stated rate per hour, trench walls are vased smooth for bedding, and a rock log runs per metre so the closure report says rock — not “unforeseen conditions”. Utility locates and a private-line sweep precede every foot of open trench.
2025 — 2026
Modeled, cut, handed over
The mass-haul diagram was on the quote, and I had never seen that before. Sixty-one thousand yards moved and forty trucked off site — the low bid trucked four hundred. The grade came in at tolerance and the as-built made the county review short.
Our architect specified a floor slab over two feet of structural fill and every bid shrugged at the compaction. Otterbank priced the lifts, tested each one at 98 percent, and handed over a log per lift. The floor is eleven years old and dead flat.
What is a mass-haul diagram and why should I care?
It is a chart of where every cubic yard on your site has to move, and it is the difference between a bid and an estimate. A site graded without one is priced by the yard moved instead of the yard that had to move — the gap is regularly hundreds of truckloads, and it always lands on somebody’s invoice.
How tight is ±0.04 ft, really?
About half an inch — tight enough that formwork crews set steel off our grades and puddles cannot find a home. Every finish surface is rover-checked before handover, and the readings go into the as-built beside the densities.
Do you work all winter?
We model, trench and place fill until frost stops compaction. A frozen lift cannot be tested to Proctor, so structural fill waits for thawable ground — the calendar does not get a vote on physics, and neither do we.
Who shoots the as-built?
We do, with the same rover that staked the job. You receive surfaces, density logs, locate numbers and the rock log in one bound record. If a county engineer has ever asked you for less paperwork, frame it.
Straight answers
Asked by the people who pay
The four that decide most bids. If yours is not here, the office line at the bottom of the page answers seven to five with an operator on the other end.
Send the parcel, get the arithmetic
A parcel number and a rough idea is enough to start. We fly it, model it, and come back with a cut-and-fill balance your other bids can be checked against. model@otterbankearth.example