Due to the increasing necessity of building on soils with insufficient bearing capacity, the development of methods for soil improvement is an important geotechnical engineering issue. One of the innovative methods of soil stabilisation is the use of nano-additives. The paper presents the influence of nanosilica on the bearing capacity under the footing under undrained conditions. For this purpose, a simple and quick unconfined compression test was used to evaluate the undrained shear strength of selected silty soil. Tests were conducted for soil without additives and with nanosilica contents of 1, 3 and 5%. All samples were compacted to the maximum dry density in a Proctor apparatus, and strength tests were conducted after 7 days of curing. The results clearly show an increase in undrained shear strength with increasing nanosilica content. Based on these data, a parametric analysis of the bearing capacity under the strip footing was performed for 4 variants of nanosilica content and for 9 loading cases. Thus, the impact of stabilisation in a practical engineering issue was presented. For all load cases the optimal dimensions of the foundation were determined. In addition, for the selected case, calculations were made for a fixed foundation dimension. All computations were performed in accordance with Eurocode 7 with GEO5 software.

The paper presents the results of experimental validation of a set of innovative software services supporting processes of achieving, assessing and maintaining conformance with standards and regulations. The study involved several hospitals implementing the Accreditation Standard promoted by the Polish Ministry of Health. First we introduce NOR-STA services that implement the TRUST-IT methodology of argument management. Then we describe and justify a set of metrics aiming at assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of the services. Next we present values of the metrics that were built from the data collected. The paper concludes with giving the interpretation and discussing the results of the measurements with respect to the objectives of the validation experiment.