Analyze the Balance of Cut/Fill Volumes for a Job Site

If you discover that you have a bank excess or deficit of mass earthwork-related materials on-site after you run a Takeoff Report with the Mass earthwork analysis option enabled, consider running the Analyze Earthwork Balance command. It performs the same mass earthwork analysis in order to help you achieve an earthwork balance, should you have some latitude to revise the design grades. Using the applicable original ground and finished design surfaces (typically those classified as mass earthwork prepped and mass earthwork finished), this command calculates how a cut/fill balance can be achieved, based either on the total elimination of, or a restriction in the allowable volume of borrow or waste. You can also choose to calculate a redistribution of excess material using an elevation adjustment to the design surface over the entire site or a specified area. Areas that you might choose to redistribute excess materials over might include:

Parking lot or building boundary - Adjust the elevation of a designed area on the site. If you raise or lower a building pad by some amount, for example, you will probably need to redesign related features, such as utilities, sidewalks, and grading.
Reserve parcel of outlying future development phase - Adjust the elevation of an area on the site that is expected to be developed in the future. Balance volumes by storing earth on or borrowing it from those "out parcels" with no immediate development plans (to avoid upfront costs by delaying potential off-site borrow or waste operations until the future).
Entire site - Adjust the elevation over the entire site (within the edge boundary of the finished design surface) to achieve the mass earthwork volume balance.

Prerequisites:

License; See the Subscription Plans page. For a license matrix by command, see the License page in the TBC Community. Also see View and manage licensed features.
Takeoff surfaces (original and design) built using the Categorize Takeoff Layers command

To access the command:

Select Analyze Earthwork Balance in Takeoff > Report.

To balance cut and fill volumes on a job site:

In the Off-site Loose Haulage group, specify any earthen material volumes that you intend to dispose of or borrow from an off-site location, by entering that volume in terms of its loose haulage density state.
Note: The Borrow volume or Waste volume that you specify (as converted to an in-place fully compacted density state) will be excluded from the bank excess/deficit volume used in calculating the suggested elevation adjustment (in step 6).
In the Areas of Interest group, check the boxes for the individual AOIs in which the earthwork balance should be analyzed. If you do not select any AOIs, the balance is calculated based on earthwork operations occurring over the entire site.
Select an option in the Earthen Materials group:
- Compute bank volumes only - Select this if you do not want to account for the shrinkage and bulkage properties of the applicable earthen materials in computing the cut/fill volumes.
- Account for shrinkage and bulkage - Select this if you are calculating volumes for earthen materials, for which shrinkage, bulkage, and compaction factors have been defined within the Material and Site Improvement Manager .
If you opted to account for shrinkage and bulkage of the materials, specify materials in the lists:
- Native material - Select the most representative of the native, earthen material that exists on-site.
  Note: If no subsurface earthen material strata have been defined, the Native material control will be enabled, allowing a single representative earthen material to be identified. Otherwise, the materials associated with the defined strata will be employed as they are encountered via excavation, and the Native material control will be disabled.
- Borrow material - Select a material to be obtained from off-site sources should there be a net bank deficit in material.
Select an option for specifying the area over which to calculate a relative elevation adjustment if the results reflect a bank excess or deficit:
- Use entire site - Select this to calculate an elevation adjustment over the entire site (within the extents of the applicable finished design surface).
- Select boundary - Choose this to select a closed line that designates an area within which to calculate the elevation adjustment. Then click in the Elevation adjustment boundary box and pick a boundary in the Plan View.
Click Apply. The bank excess or deficit and the vertical distance needed for an elevation adjustment to the area you specified is reported in the Results section.
Note: To see a shorter summary of the results of the earthwork balance analysis, check the Concise box before you click Apply.
Warning: After using this command, make the elevation adjustment to the finished design surface with caution and generally under the supervision of a design engineer. If you specify the elevation change to an area that crosses over other area-based site improvements, there could be unintended consequences.

To adjust the elevation of a takeoff surface:

Note: This iterative workflow is applicable when the entire site is to be raised or lowered using earthen materials that have shrinkage and bulkage properties.

Use [Control] + [C] to copy the Required elevation adjustment value from the Results section and leave the command open.
Note: When you leave the Balance Earthwork Volumes command running, it remains in either a persistent deficit-balancing or excess-balancing mode when you subsequently rerun the command.
Use the Categorize Takeoff Layers command to select the layers that contribute to the applicable Finished Design surface.
Use the Change Elevation command to apply a Relative change in elevation using the adjustment value you copied.
Rebuild the takeoff surfaces using the Build Takeoff Surfaces command.
Rerun the Analyze Earthwork Balance command to see if your cut/fill volumes are now in balance.
To further balance the volumes, repeat the steps above.