The yard area of one project in East Africa is 1.15 million m2.The yard is filled with reclamation material dredging from basin and berth,and the design load of the yard is 30 kPa and 50 kPa.Under the suggestion of consultant engineer,boreholes have been arranged to carry out geological drilling.After the borehole drilling,the De Beer’s method is used to calculate the theoretical settlement,if the theoretical settlement is less than 10 cm,the ground treatment is not required.Some of the calculation theoretical settlements are especially close to the 10 cm critical value,thus if the contractor straightly judge no need for ground improvement,during the construction or when the yard is going to be used,the ground maybe appears serious settlement which can be a technology risk.Therefore the zone loading test is applied to recheck the value of settlement.The yard need no ground treatment according the ZLT test result and theory analysis.