Marine Site Investigation (1990 - 1991)
Fugro's pre-design offshore geotechnical exploration program was (at the time) the largest ever undertaken on the West Coast. The program included:

• Over 124 borings,
• 30 Cone Penetration Tests (CPT),
  
• Vane shear testing
  
• Shear wave testing
  
• 87 vibracores,
  
• 140 miles of geophysical lines,
  
• Over 2500 high quality representative soil samples, and
  
• Environmental sediment chemistry and bioassay samples from 24 environmental regions.
  

The offshore drilling was conducted using Fugro's skid-mounted drilling equipment on two vessels: 1) a 165-foot vessel with self-anchoring capabilities and 2) a self-elevating jack-up platform. Soil borings were drilled in deep water locations outside the harbor breakwater and in shallow water locations adjacent to existing dikes. The geotechnical testing program was conducted to classify subsurface materials and develop relevant physical properties required for future engineering analysis of project elements.

A conscious effort was made throughout the field investigation to integrate existing data (from previous investigations) and new data (from this investigation) into the plan for locating and sampling the remaining borings and geotechnical vibracores. This was accomplished through evaluation of the geophysical and geotechnical data as they were being collected and adjusting undrilled boring and geotechnical vibracore locations accordingly.

Palos Verdes Fault Study (1990-1994)
As part of the 2020 Plan Geotechnical Investigation, Fugro defined the location, characteristics, and seismicity of the Palos Verdes fault as it crosses the Los Angeles Outer Harbor. The field investigation program included continuous sample borings and continuous CPT borings on each side of the fault at two locations in the Outer Harbor. A number of samples from those borings were age-dated to define the time sequence of the late Quaternary sediments underlying the Outer Harbor.

The new data allowed the mapping of the location of the fault as it crosses the Outer Harbor. Based on the data, a second geophysical investigation that collected data on closely spaced tracklines was used to map the offset of a paleochannel as it crosses the fault. The mapped offset of a feature of known age was used to estimate the sense and rate of slip of the fault. This work was conducted from late 1990 through 1994.