Does a soil report check for contamination as well as classification?

Not always automatically — a standard geotechnical soil report focuses primarily on classification for foundation design (soil type, reactivity, bearing capacity), which is genuinely a different assessment to a contamination investigation.

Where contamination is a genuine concern — a site’s history suggesting past industrial or other higher-risk use — a separate, specific environmental/contamination assessment may be warranted alongside the standard geotechnical report.

If you have any reason to suspect your site might carry contamination risk, raising this specifically with your geotechnical engineer or seeking a dedicated environmental assessment is worth doing rather than assuming a standard soil report automatically covers it.

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