Court Groundworks Questions Checklist

Write down what the area was used for before, including whether it was a yard, a garden, a car park, a paddock, a tip or part of a larger field.

Previous use is the strongest clue to what lies beneath, and it is usually known only to the owner or to somebody who has been on the site a long time.

Note anything suggesting the ground has been made up or filled, such as brick fragments, ash, glass, unexplained dips or a flat area on an otherwise sloping site.

Filled ground behaves differently under a court, and describing the clues you can see gives the engineer somewhere to start.

Whether ground is suitable to build a court on is established by a qualified engineer after proper investigation, never from surface appearance.

Walk the area after wet weather and mark where the ground feels soft, where boots sink and where ruts have formed from mowing or from vehicles.

Soft ground shows itself only when it is wet, so this is evidence that has to be gathered at the right moment rather than recalled later.

Note what grows on the area now, including bare patches, moss, rushes and unusually vigorous weed growth, and where each of those appears.

Vegetation patterns often mark wet ground, buried hardstanding or disturbed soil, and describing them takes only a walk round with a notebook.

Record anything you know about earlier digging on the area, including old foundations, demolished buildings, a filled pond, buried rubble or a former hardstanding.

Buried remains are found by machines rather than by drawings, and an early warning changes what an engineer asks to be investigated.

Ask what ground investigation the engineer would want before a base is designed, and record what they say they need to see rather than assuming it can be skipped.

Ground investigation and the interpretation of what it finds belong to a qualified engineer and cannot be replaced by an owner opinion.

List every tree and large shrub on or near the area, note roughly how close each one sits to the proposed court, and ask whether any of them is protected.

Whether a tree is protected, and what may be done near its roots, must be confirmed with your local authority and a qualified arboricultural professional.

Note any existing slab, tarmac, path or foundation on the area, and ask whether it would be broken out, built over or left where it is.

Existing hard surfaces change the excavation entirely, and whether one can be used is a question for the contractor and engineer rather than an assumption.

Ask what happens to the topsoil and turf stripped from the area, and whether any of it could stay on site for banks, planting or reinstatement afterwards.

Topsoil is often carted away and then needed again for the landscaping around the finished court, and deciding early avoids that round trip.

Record what forms each boundary of the area, whether a hedge, a wall, a post fence, a bank or a neighbouring building, and note the condition of each.

Boundary features constrain where machines can work and are frequently damaged during groundworks, so their condition is worth recording before anyone starts.

Note by eye which way the ground falls across the area, and where the highest and lowest points sit, without attempting to put a figure on any gradient.

Levels, falls and any cut or fill are surveyed and designed by a qualified professional, and owner estimates must never be used as a basis for the work.

Mark anything on the area that has to survive the works, such as a chamber cover, a water trough, a memorial tree, a marker post or a boundary stone.

Items that must stay are easily lost in a general strip, and marking them physically is more reliable than mentioning them once at a site meeting.

Ask your utility providers and the local authority for records of what runs across or near the area, and gather whatever they send before excavation is planned.

Service records take a while to obtain and are among the first things a groundworks contractor asks for, so requesting them early keeps the project moving.

Walk the area and photograph every cover, chamber lid, marker post, stopcock, gully, standpipe and rodding eye you can find, including those hidden in vegetation.

What is visible on the surface is the plainest evidence of what runs beneath it, and vegetation hides more of it than most owners expect.

Write down any private run you know of, such as a supply to a shed, a field trough, an old drainage connection or a cable to a light, since these appear on no plan.

Private services are the ones that get cut, because the people who laid them have usually long since moved on and nobody recorded the route.

Note where you believe foul or surface water drains cross the area, and ask who is responsible for anything that would end up beneath the court.

Building over or near a drain, and any alteration to one, must be confirmed with your local authority and the party responsible for that drainage.

Ask the contractor what service detection they carry out before digging and what they expect you to provide beforehand, and record the answer in writing.

Locating buried services and working near them is specialist work for suitably qualified people, and no digging should proceed on an owner assumption.

Look up as well as down, and note any overhead line, telephone wire or low branch crossing the area or the route a machine would have to take.

Overhead lines affect what plant can be used and where it can lift, and they are missed precisely because everyone is looking at the ground.

Ask what happens to the material dug out, whether it leaves the site or stays on it, and where it would be heaped while the rest of the work continues.

Spoil handling is one of the largest practical parts of a groundworks package, and it is often treated as somebody else problem until the heaps appear.

Consider whether any excavated material could be used on your own land to form a bank, level a corner or fill a hollow, and ask whether that is realistic here.

Whether excavated material may be kept, moved or reused on site depends on what it is, and must be confirmed with your local authority and a qualified professional.

Ask what would happen if unexpected material such as asbestos, ash, tar or buried waste is uncovered, and who decides what happens next on the day.

Identification and handling of contaminated or hazardous material is for suitably qualified specialists and the relevant authority, never an on-site decision.

Ask what material is brought in for the layers beneath the playing surface and who specifies it, and record the answer rather than choosing between options yourself.

The make-up of the layers beneath a court is a design matter for a qualified engineer and the surfacing specialist working together.

Walk the route lorries would take from the public road and note the narrowest point, soft verges, low branches, tight turns, parked cars and any weak surface.

Access is one of the first practical questions a contractor asks, and describing it honestly avoids a delivery that has to turn round and go home.

Agree in writing who repairs the access route, verges and gateways if they are damaged by the traffic that the works generate.

Damage to a drive or a grass verge during groundworks is a common dispute, and it is settled easily beforehand and painfully afterwards.

Write down what would meet each edge of the finished court, whether grass, a path, a bank, a fence line, a hedge or an existing hard surface.

Each edge is a different detail, and describing all four sides prevents the perimeter being drawn as though the court sat in open space.

Ask what holds the edge of the construction in place, and treat the answer as part of the design rather than as a finishing touch added at the end.

Edge details keep the layers where they were put, and a failed edge tends to take part of the playing surface with it.

Note whether the finished court would sit above, below or level with the ground around it, and ask what happens where those levels meet.

Any retaining of ground at a level change is an engineering matter for a qualified engineer and must not be resolved on site by eye.

Consider how the strip beside the court would be mown or strimmed, and ask whether the proposed edge detail would survive that treatment.

Strimmer damage to court edges and fence feet is relentless, and the maintenance method is easier to allow for now than to correct later.

Ask whether any fence, enclosure or lighting column would be founded inside, outside or through the court construction, and who coordinates that.

How enclosure and lighting foundations relate to a court construction is for the engineer and the specialist contractors to determine together.

Record what the area around the court is expected to look like when the machines leave, and who is responsible for making it so.

The surroundings are the last thing done and the first thing seen, and leaving them unstated is how a finished court sits in a churned field.

Note how much open space sits beside the court area for machines to turn, for material to be stacked and for a lorry to stand while it is unloaded.

A court squeezed against boundaries is far harder to build than to draw, and the working space question is asked at the site visit or not at all.

Describe what plant would have to cross to reach the area, whether a lawn, a paddock, a gravel drive, a car park or a neighbouring access.

Whether a surface or structure can carry construction plant is established by the contractor and a qualified professional, not by an owner estimate.

Ask whether the contractor needs water or power on site during the works, where they expect to take it from, and who is responsible for that supply.

Site supplies are assumed to exist and then found not to, and the question is far easier to settle before anyone arrives with equipment.

Ask where site huts, a toilet, a skip and stacked material would stand, and whether that position blocks anything the site still has to use.

The compound takes up more room than the court itself in the early stages, and its position is rarely discussed until it appears.

Ask how an open excavation would be kept secure between working days, particularly where children, animals or the public can reach the area, and record who is responsible.

Securing an open excavation is the responsibility of the contractor in charge of the site and should be agreed in writing before work begins.

Write down what else on the site has to keep running during the groundworks, such as parking, other pitches, a playground or a working garden.

Naming the disruption in advance turns it into a planned inconvenience rather than a complaint that arrives in the middle of the work.

Ask the surfacing specialist what they require of the ground handed over to them, then ask the groundworks contractor whether they hold that requirement in writing.

Surfacing specialists work to a defined starting condition, and the groundworks contractor can only meet it if it has actually been passed on to them.

Ask who looks at the prepared formation before the surface goes on, and what would happen if it is not accepted on the day.

Acceptance of a prepared formation is a matter for the surfacing specialist and a qualified professional, and should never rest on an owner judgement.

Decide and record whether the groundworks and the surfacing sit with one party or with two, and who coordinates between them if they are separate.

A single party removes the argument about whose fault a defect is, while two can work well provided the handover point is written down first.

Treat the flatness, falls and finish of the construction as matters set by the surfacing manufacturer and the engineer, and ask for those in writing.

Finish requirements come from the manufacturer of the surface actually being laid, and must not be agreed informally on site between trades.

Ask what photographs and records would be taken of each layer before it is covered, and request copies of all of them for your own file.

Once a court is surfaced nothing beneath it can be seen again, and the photographic record is the only evidence of what was actually built.

Agree in writing who returns if the surface later moves, cracks or holds water, and how a fault would be attributed between the parties involved.

How a defect is diagnosed and attributed is for the contractors and a qualified professional to establish with reference to the written contract.