and welcome to the 11th annual
novel engineering lecture i'd like to
begin by recognizing alan cadden
who will be introducing today's speaker
and alan is
he's a principal engineer and also the
strategic development director first
novel engineering associates
alan's a great friend of the civil
engineering department
he served on the alumni advisory board
there are lots of other good things for
the department
and in particular he's a good friend of
the geotechnical engineering program
he obtained his master's degree here at
virginia tech
and he's one of the key supporters
within scholar engineering
of their participation in our center for
geotechnical practice and research
alan's done lots of other good things
for the program he supports this lecture
series
which includes the food at the back of
the hall that i hope you'll all
enjoy after the presentation is over
and with that i just have one other
announcement which is to ask you to be
sure
and silence your mobile phone so we
don't have that kind of interruption
during that
during the presentation and now please
join me in thanking alan for all the
things that he does for our program
uh good afternoon and welcome to the uh
the schnabel lecture
thank you dr phil for putting this
together and and the real thing
probably goes to sandy who does all the
hard work right
so thank you sandy um it's our pleasure
to bring you this lecture this is the
11th
in our series of lectures here at
virginia tech
we value this opportunity and our
membership with the center for
geotechnical practice and research
because this allows us to maintain a
strong relationship with the university
for those of you who are not aware of
who schnabel engineering is
we are 300 people strong we are
located throughout the kind of
mid-atlantic area
and then a few offices scattered around
the united states
and i'm well yeah okay
um one of the neat things about schnabel
is that we're at esop firms so
all of our owners all of our employees
are owners of the firm
and i'm actually pretty happy to say
that i'm an owner as well and i've been
an owner for about 30 years which
is only half as long as shot has been
around so we're pretty excited to be
celebrating our 60th anniversary this
year
so as i mentioned we have offices
primarily throughout the eastern united
states
from these offices we provide
geotechnical geostructural
dam and underground uh tunnel design
and engineering services across the
united states and around the world
actually all of our
all of this is where the focus is on
understanding and managing risk
for and with our clients so you'll know
our tagline down here
built better together that speaks to our
focus on working closely together
with within our company to bring the
best capabilities
we can to our project but also to
working closely
with our clients to understand their
needs and find ways to help them become
successful so i believe you've got to
hear something very similar
similar focus and purpose for the
message today from our speaker
he has built his career from the ground
up starting
uh beginning of his career in the
construction industry and after 15 years
of wielding a shovel and
maybe a little more than just that
as a general contractor he entered the
foundation construction
world more than 27 years ago
his experience includes many drill
foundation systems
as well as earth retention and ground
improvement techniques
which i believe we're going to hear you
know a lot of a lot of experience on
that today
um he worked his way up now to
being the executive well of course we
have to be an executive vice president
district manager for malcolm
northwest operations on many diverse and
ambitious
state of the practice state-of-the-art
projects in some very diverse
geologic conditions across that region
in those early years i was involved in
many interesting projects throughout the
western united states
including alaska and hawaii i'm happy to
help you out
there and occasionally even came east a
little bit in
places like georgia kentucky although i
understand this is the
first time he's ever been to virginia
and
as dr mitchell and dr duncan have proved
that once you come here you never go
back
so welcome to virginia
uh let's see here he was recently named
president ceo
chief operating officer of nazi drilling
and he's moved to their headquarters in
the san francisco bay area
i've spent a fair bit of time with al
particularly
through my activities in industry
organizations
including the adsc where he's recently
completed his two terms
as president of that organization he is
and great business sense but he's also
conscious
of the well-being of those around him he
takes the time to help anyone he can
whether it be their personal or their
career advancement
or supporting worthy causes weather over
dinner on the golf course
i've enjoyed getting to know al and hope
our friendship continues for many years
to come
and i hope that after this presentation
you'll feel the same way
so without further delay i look forward
to hearing al's presentation
technology advances in the geo
foundation world
or better late than never so please join
me in welcoming
i always enjoy this
i've had this opportunity some people
don't think it's an
opportunity but i've had this
opportunity several times and
as i go around the one thing that i
enjoy more than anything else in the
world
is teaching young people about this
industry
it is a big kick of mine so to be here
with you guys
is a tremendous honor for me so that
being said
could i have hands raised for those who
joined us for some
pizza and beer
make sure you're all here okay that's
pretty good
pretty good so
as alan said i work for a company called
malcolm
drilling where a small young fledgling
company
we've only been in existence for 56
years
and uh but we've had a lot of fun along
the way
it was started by a single man who
graduated from the army rangers and
he decided i'm gonna i'm gonna
run a drilling company so he went and he
took all the money he had from the
service and he borrowed a little money
from a friend
and he bought his first drill rig
and 56 years later he drive flies around
in his g4
jet and he did all right
so it's a great company for me to
represent and i appreciate the honor to
be with you here today
see is it here
anybody seen this picture before anybody
know the actual name of it raise your
hand
lunch in the clouds because it's
actually its name
and it's one of my favorites um
i have actually uh there's a copy of
this in our office in san francisco
and i just i really enjoy it but uh
anybody tell him
tell me anything that's wrong about this
picture
no hard hats yes
this guy right here doesn't even have a
shirt on
right he's got he's getting a light and
you know
pretty fascinating so over the years
this picture has been replicated
many many times let me get back this one
right here
see the little difference there this is
our world now right
got the hard hats they got the full body
harness they got the
work boots they got the ipads
this guy's looking up set of plans right
and of course not to be undone the
ladies
in the early days of construction
especially in the geo
foundation industry women were not that
that involved but today look around the
room
it's really really cool so i thought
this was i saw this picture and i
you know i gotta i like my wife said i
couldn't put it in the bedroom
but i really like this picture
part of the reason why i wanted to show
that picture
is now and today
you guys are in on a very amazing time
when i think back in in the drilling
business i've only been in the drilling
business for about
27 years i started my career in
construction building buildings and then
i
switched over to the dark side if you're
a general contractor
but a lot has changed
this is a pile driver okay
this is i call um we
we tease our friends in the pow driving
industry those who can't drill
drive pile but uh this is one of the
really early early ones you can see
it's a wood boat it's floating
this one is waiting to jump into the bay
this one's actually driving pile and
creating a
a trestle as it's working its way out
like the old steam for the
steam bellheimer
i bounced that one in there because
anybody here
and like you can't i know you guys might
be able to
the steam powered
piledriver anybody seen one of those
been around one of those i have
yeah well you're old
i mean you're not as old me but you're
old but anyway that's kind of cool that
was
uh that was the technology for
foundations you take a piece of wood
you take a piece of a precast concrete
pile
and you pound it into the ground until
you can't pound it anymore right
super high tech whoops
now this is a little more mari modern
you can see there's a
crawler crane it's got a a set of leads
hanging from it
you can see by the looks of the trucks
it's not that old
but this method for driving pile
is used today right
you'll see this um all around the
country
see this is they're driving steel pile
on this particular one
now as time has changed technology is
changed
this machine here which is
a a juton it's uh
driving you know vibrating some piles in
and
based upon that boom he's got a
vibrating hammer on there he could have
a pile driving hammer
he could have a multiple set of leads
but as time has gone on
the technology of getting a pile in the
ground has improved
and this big old boy is a 300 ton
crawler crane with a spotter on it
and you see that they're getting ready
to basically install
precast concrete piling
so there's a very short term 100 plus
years
of what it meant to basically put piling
in the ground
both around the country and really
around the world
i put this slide in because this was
actually a
concoction of a good friend of mine
and uh this is a company called ape
anybody seen an ape hammer no
this is called the king kong sometimes
if you've been around job sites
you'll see guys with hats on they'll
look like a big gorilla that's because
of the king kong
what he did is he took one two three
four five six seven
king kongs and he bolted them all
together
because what they wanted to do is they
wanted to put
this 48 foot diameter pile
into the into the ground actually into
the water into the ground
and imagine what that sounded like when
they turned that on
drilled shafts the era of drilled shafts
we're going to talk about drilled shafts
and drilled shaft equipment for a while
so you guys can understand what was
what what was what is current
and what's coming down in the future now
why is it
important for you guys to understand
what's
com what's available now what's
available in the future
anybody got an idea on that raise your
hand scaredy cats
cal berkeley they would have already
raised their hands
it doesn't matter to you don't think
it's there you go
yeah maybe if if you're going to be a
designer
it's important to know what works what
doesn't work
who can uh i i kind of butchered uh dr
kirsten
tersagi's uh famous quote from last
night but i was drinking beer
um can anybody tell me what what his
favorite
famous saying was
don't put on paper what you have to
wish in the ground okay
you're gonna have to bring it a little
more i'm going to go back to california
and i'm going to tell on you
so the area drilled shaft equipment
1920s look at this monster holy cow
ah beckon company anybody heard of ah
beck they're still in existence they
still exist in texas and
and down into florida they're one of the
oldest foundation drilling companies in
the world
h back you can see this is a big old
house that's uh got a steam
that's operating pumps you got a little
drive line that's going up here
and this thing looks like it might be
able to drill a 12-inch hole
approximately six feet in the ground
near as i can tell
but it took an entire crew to do it
apparently
this is the earliest picture i've been
able to find about drilling equipment
this is a beauty this is uh that was the
next
kind of step in
drill rigs they wanted to put them on
trucks
this was very inventive where this guy
wanted to basically drive his truck back
it up stand it up
then undo the powertrain on the truck
and hook it up to the drill rig
look at this big old belt
it's kind of a cool picture
from there they continue to always want
to put
drill rigs on trucks the purpose for
putting drill rugs on trucks is to get
them
from point a to point b uh easily
this old ugly dog is so old the boom's
not even on it anymore but
this is one of the first few examples of
having its own diesel power unit
on the truck
of course the next obvious change is a
crane mount
now crane mounts is a drilling
attachment that you very simply
attach on the front of a crane it's got
the motor that runs all the
fluid to the drill rotary
you've got the kelly bars hanging down
there and you see this thing is
going to town challenges with this is
the only crowd it gets is the weight of
the kelly bars going down through the
ground
that's all the weight you get you don't
get any push into the ground
so kelly bars everybody know what a
kelly bar
is no okay kelly bar
is in the original days of drill rigs
was two pieces of square stock steel
one that was inside the other and how
the drill rig would crowd into the
ground is it would lock
the the outside kelly onto the inside
kelly
and then push down and it would slip and
then it would grab and it would slip
the reason why i got its name kelly barr
kelly
is because at the turn of the century
about
1910 1915 there was a very famous
philadelphia baseball player his name
was kelly
and then he was had the for a long long
time
held the steel's record and so they
would say slide kelly slide that was the
thing
clyde silly and that's how kelly bars
got it stained
very simply has nothing to do with
anything other than a baseball player in
philadelphia
of course the next possible is you add a
drill attachment to a backhoe
this old dog here is you can see it's
got all the plumbing and everything
ready to hook onto a regular boom
section to dig a hole
with the with the bucket you unh
attach it here and you basically hook up
your hydraulic
lines and now you got a drill rig this
technology still exists it's used a lot
especially for low overhead conditions
and finally a self-contained drill rig
this is one of the first known
self-contained drill rigs you can see
it's got its own tracks
it's got there's a place for the
operator to sit over there you got the
hydraulic engine you got a
back winch to kind of pull it down over
here and
this is the best looking piece of the
whole drill rig
the auger on the front of it
so drill rigs have been around a long
time
but the reality is drill rigs have been
pretty much the same
for tens decades upon decades okay
i talked to some of you guys the other
night and you said you know
uh you know this guy you know i was on
this job i was inspecting this job and
this guy drilled this hole and he put
polymer in it
and you know
he checked it you know i hit i took the
weighted tape i put it on there
everything was great but the next
morning they just start pouring the
concrete i don't know if the shaft is
still good or not
well that's because it's still basically
the same technology
so the next step up this is this big old
boy here is a watson 3100
just outside a texas fort worth texas
and most of the drill rigs in the united
states of america were manufactured in
texas
why because that's where a lot of the
drilling was
and they would sell eventually they
built drill rigs for their own use
and then after time they started selling
them
virtually like every drill rig
manufacturer that's in the world today
they didn't start building no company
started building drill rigs
to sell them they started building drill
rigs to do their own business
and i thought wow maybe we'll start
selling these
watson was one of the first ones there's
also a company called
texoma obviously texas hughes
the ldh texas the unique thing about
this drill rig
is it finally had positive crowd
it was a heavy machine it had
good hydraulic power the cables were
quite fast on it
and this right here was where the drill
pod is
this is how all american-made
at to this point in time drill rigs were
manufactured was called a
fixed bottom rotary machine
now why is that a good idea
well that's where all the torque happens
and so that's where you can beef it up
hydraulics had not been taken to the
point where they have today
and it was just a good solid place that
they could continue to manufacture the
drill rig and the
drill rig would continue to function and
operate
to a high standard for a long period of
time
but the reality is you can see here
underneath this drill rig the tallest
tool you could put underneath it is
approximately five feet tall that's here
why because then it would hit the hit
the rotary
right
there's a brand new drill rig
mounted on a brand new truck not
beautiful
what's this truck designed for
power line work right now if you're not
involved if
any of you have not been involved in the
power line the power line
the power lines the power grid in the
united states of america is in a bad way
they're running more power through on
power lines throughout the united states
of america than they were ever
remotely designed to do and so
everywhere you look they're running new
towers running new lines
bigger capacity to keep us and
near as i can figure out it's also it
can the power can go to california
which i'm fine with because now i live
there
so you can see this machine here
beautiful machine
disadvantage of a machine like this on a
job site is
you can't get it where you need to go
because if you're in the mud and you're
out in
the boonies somewhere you got to pull
this thing to get it where it's got to
go so it has
huge limitations malcolm drilling has
one
truck mounted drill rig in its entire
fleet
and it's a little teeny drill rig that
every once while this comes up you need
it
so that's why we have it
okay so i talked about what a great time
this is for you guys and the reason is
is we're kind of in the renaissance
you've heard about the renaissance right
you guys were forced to go to those
classes
right you know somebody kill me classes
none of those professors are here okay
but right now you're basically in the
beginning of the renaissance
in the foundation drilling world and the
geo
structures world i mean there are so
many uh things that are happening and
changing in our market right now
that you guys are coming out of you know
college in the next
you know year months or whatever it is
what a
great time you guys are going to have
whether you're going to go work for an
agency
or whether you're going to go work for a
contractor or whether you're going to go
to work for
god forbid novel i'm kidding
i'm kidding you should all go work first
novel
unless you come to work for me did you
say i could
say that anyway renaissance for drilling
equipment it's
all brand new day and man is it some fun
stuff out there for us to play with
this right here is a hydraulic top drive
crawler mounted drill rig that's the
technical term
anybody seen one of these
anybody seen this on campus i heard
there was one of these on campus not too
long ago
so why is this a big deal looks like a
drill rig right
well yeah it's on tracks it's pretty
the housing on it supports a tier 4
engine which means it puts out
better um you know exhaust than uh
than a tesla electric car near as i can
tell
uh phenomenal there and it's
the reason why it's called a top drive
is that rotary travels up and down the
boom
that rotary can go all the way whoops
sorry that rotary can go all the way to
the top of the boom
now the funny thing about this picture
is they still put a five foot auger on
it
i don't know why but
so here you go you got your wenches here
that pulls the
kelly bar up and down there's your
rotary that goes
all the way up to there you can put
longer tools on it
in fact this machine actually doesn't
know what it is
this technology today has gone into the
world of psychology
and made these poor drill rigs
schizophrenic
they literally don't know every morning
what they're gonna do
because you can put all sorts of new
toys
what toys all these great toys
here is one of our bg20 drill rigs
and it's got a kelly bar anything
different about the kelly bar
the kelly bar is that big around on this
small machine
it's round it's interlocking
so it basically has these dogs to lock
it off
now why is that a big deal because
it doesn't slide kelly's slide they lock
and when that machine has the capacity
to pull down it
it's you know hundreds of thousands of
pounds of crowd
and torque you can literally pick that
drill rig's tracks up off the ground by
pushing it in the ground
never had that capability before now
what does that mean
you run into a buried log boulder
obstruction this baby
flat will go through it okay and this is
a small machine
you can see here now this is a core
barrel
it's got the teeth down on the bottom
this machine
now with the locking kelly bars you can
see here has the ability to crowd down
on
rock and formations more than we have
had for
ever basically forever it used to be
when we would bid work
one of the the items that was always
discussed in every contract
that we did was well what are you going
to do
to mitigate the problems of obstructions
well the easiest ones answer don't have
any obstructions out there for us
and if we run into obstructions we got
to go on force account
and sometimes if you had a boulder to go
through on force account with other
types of
kelly bar type slide you know type
technology you could core on that
boulder
for five days
kept sliding clip sliding so on so forth
here's another one this is a you see
it's a top drive look how
far high this is up in the air why is it
a good deal to have it in the air
because this machine now is there's the
top of a casing
this machine now has the ability to spin
casing in reusable casing
while it's excavating out the shaft at
the same time
so this machine can case the hole and
drill the hole
at the same time
that's new that's different that's a big
deal
when you've got projects out there that
call for secant piles
or they want to make sure that the
foundations on the project are
to the diameter specified
and this is a good method when i was
first getting the drilling industry
if we had a six foot diameter shaft
and this is in washington which is a
seismically active
state believe me we would go out there
with a 10 foot diameter can
that was approximately 20 feet tall 15
to 20 foot fall
we put that in clean that out then
we'd come over and there's the six foot
or an eight foot can
that was another 20 or 30 feet long we
dropped that inside of that one and
twist that one down
and then we would come with the six and
take it down the rest of the way
and then you set the cage which is
probably
five foot in diameter and when you got
done pouring it what did it look like
what's good on a hot day
a snow cone it looked like a snow cone
so if you've been here in a seismically
active zone and you have a foundation
looks like a snow cone
is that a good thing is that a good
thing
why because that shock wave liquefaction
when that hits that foundation
that's a bad deal so
this now has created a lot of good
different types of things that we can do
with this
and you can see this is the this is a
job we did in
las vegas you can see
how does that quality look
nice round deals at the top why
casing down spin it down clerk clean out
the shaft
pour the concrete up bingo that's what
you got
secant pile walls who knows what a
secant pile wall is
see this is a test for your professors
as well
see camp pile walls why is it called a
sea camp powwow who can tell me that
why come on i know we were drinking last
night but i told a couple of you
this is geometry you have two circles
that overlap
that little area right there is called
the secant of a circle where they
overlap
that's how it gets its name so if the
shafts overlap it's a sea camp pot wall
what if they kiss each other what's it
called
it's called a cylinder powwow okay
so most seacamp pile walls are
constructed with
basically the installation of a primary
pile
most walls this is done with lean
concrete
on more exotic projects it's also 4000
psi structural concrete
and also some projects it's
has a cage in it and then you get the
secondary
the secondary ones are obviously the
ones that have to cut through the other
two piles
there go sea camp powwow what would you
use this
wall for well it's a cut-off wall
okay you can use it to basically make
sure that any hazardous materials or
just simply water
comes through at the
there's a project that's quite famous if
you look at any engineering magazines
called
the alaskan viaduct tunnel project
my beautiful little job in seattle
we did all the foundations for the
launch pit of this 58-foot diameter
tunnel machine
largest soft ground tunnel machine
in the world at least at that time i
think there's a 60-footer now
and we stalled five-foot diameter sea
camp piles
up to 130 feet deep fully cased
anybody seen that done right
very high performance walls these are
also used if you want to put something
very heavy on it for spanning purposes
uh very sensitive
railroad structures where you got an
abutment against a railroad track or
something along those lines
very very high performance systems
this is a project we did in las vegas
nice round circles
now that's a big deal because they got
to put shock creed over the top of that
so it looks nice and pretty for all the
gamblers you know to come and lose all
their money there's i can figure out
it's a project in portland oregon and
[Music]
it's called the west side cso project
and this purpose we put in a bunch of
sea cant pile rings the sea camp power
rings was to
basically provide access to a micro
tunneling job
that went up to 92 feet deep
so that's quite deep
so how we constructed these
was overlapping sea camp piles
that were had a guidewall at the top of
it
you had your primary went down just like
the what we previously
talked about and these shafts were 92
feet deep
look at the verticality
we had to test everyone with an
inclinometer to go down and test the
verticality
the law the worst one was point point
point five a percent out of tolerance
so drilling
drilling holes at that kind of
verticality
was never even remotely thought was a
possibility
but this new equipment we can now do
that
know what that is
okay that's a displacement tool
anybody heard of displacement tooling
that's a drilled foundation that's very
new
that's you know five six seven years
it's a european technology
and what's the purpose is to create a
hole
in some soft ground to install
a friction type pile like an auger cast
pile
but instead of inaugur doing it with an
auger cast or continuous flight method
it's done with the displacement tool so
as you turn it to the right down in the
ground
the material comes up and hits that that
is the same diameter as the hole
so it feeds up and that part of the tool
packs it to the outside
so you know you're talking about 0
to 25 blow count material you can pull
that off on
and you can't have you know nasty gravel
or cobbles or that kind of stuff
but in really soft ground which happens
in a lot of valley floors
it's a good solution
this is the job we did in kent
washington
see that that's the spoils from a 65
foot
displacement pile nothing came up
see that that's at the cage sticking up
out of the ground there they took the
site they
excavated it down so that we could have
the tails just sticking up above the
ground
that way we could walk around and have
all the tails up
so they loved it the general contractor
thought it was the best thing you'd ever
seen
but it only works in certain ground
conditions
anybody know what this is
you were talking about this at lunch
this is a csm
tool cement
soil mixing okay
csm so this machine looks like a
rototiller
it's got these blades that go to the
inside
what is it mounted on our schizophrenic
friend here
same exact machine
why is that a big deal now i've got all
these toys that i can put on
one machine i don't have to have seven
machines i just have one machine
that i can put those toys on and it's a
you know it's very formidable
so this machine basically likes makes
um lean mixed concrete in the ground
so it goes down and basically the blades
turn
there's uh cement treated based
sometimes it's got bentonite in it
depending on the application
and it creates a mixture that looks like
a rectangle
so it's kind of strange for the drilling
in business when we're used to doing
this
this creates a rectangle body
there's another shot of it
very similar to diaphragm walls like a
hydrophase diaphragm wall
but in this particular case
it's mixes the existing soils with
cement
and creates a soil crete
dual cutter heads cut soil and some soft
rock
you inject cement excellent control of
orientation
there's a device in there that tells
where it is from plum
and it can literally guide itself down
the hole if it gets at a
out of plumb this is how you would do a
wall
with this you can see
you start with your first you get the
machine the tool down in there
same machine that we're talking about
you go down
some i heard one guy talk about
going down with water and then start
putting the cement bringing it up
i would actually not suggest that i
would
i would suggest going down with a gray
water in other words a very
lean so that you get that action
started it helps break it up better than
just water
especially if you've got clay and you
can see
from this one that's now gone down and
made a panel
and then some of these panels you can
put h piles if it's a shoring wall
there's a lot of these projects that are
done with this type of configuration
they're used for other things
for example making grids
square boxes out of them why would they
want to do that
basically a panel wall here a panel here
another cross like that
liquefaction it's one of the
really good methods for uh controlling
liquefaction
we use this on a project down in miami
for the
miami tunnel project where what we did
is we put great big
uh csm walls down both sides
went across in these grids that left a
12 foot diameter square
and what the purpose of that is to
replace
all this horrible ground that's in miami
so a tunnel machine could cut through it
so it was basically creating an
environment for the tunnel machine to
work
that is soil creek done correctly
this particular project here which is
was in seattle
this project here was trying to figure
out how to go
the developer of the project had
horribly
hazardous corrosive material on the
outside
and so if he did it with conventional
methods that means all the fluids that
would come into the building
he would have to treat or pay to have
treated
with the county and it was it would have
been just absolutely
debilitating and so they couldn't figure
it out
they brought us in and we talked about
this solution now why
was this the solution below this there
were two types of ground formations one
was clay
and the other one was glacial till which
is a very
dense sandy silt
and so what we did is we took our
soil mixing tool that we just showed you
there
down into the clay and basically went
into the clay about two three feet
and we're into the glacial till and we
put the beams in
they excavated the up the excavating
contractor scraped down the top of the
piles
we put the tie back anglers on a very
steep
so they could go down into the better
ground but kept them above the water
table
voila that is dry water table is
approximately five feet down
and we had a requirement uh i can't
remember
sorry i can't remember how many gallons
per minute but we were less than
one tenth of a percent of what they said
that we had to do so it was a hugely
successful project
look what we got here same rig
poor schizophrenic guy now he's a triple
auger machine
he just got up in the morning there he
is he's a triple auger machine
what's a triple auger machine it's
another way of doing
deep soil mixing creating cut off walls
are doing other things so the same type
of
deal you do with csm or in this
particular case
you got triple augers that are turning
and mixing towards each other
you've got basically once again you're
mixing this up you're adding cement
or cement bentonite type material
you can see here you you do these three
and these three and then you go back in
and fill in between
it makes an excellent cut off wall and
it's very fast
it's more cost effective than a csm
but it has limitations on what it can
mix and and the different types of
ground conditions
so there's the two see here
same schizophrenic machine same here
here we're showing the triple auger see
how the
it's basically you can see how it turns
the material up and down
they're pitched all sorts of different
directions to keep the material flowing
up and down to get them to mix properly
and this one just chews it all up and
mixes it that way
single point mixing
that is a big cake batter don't you
think
down in miami we do a lot of this type
of work
which is single point mixing which is a
mechanical mixing it's not done with
jetting
it's not done with any type of high
pressure or low pressures or whatever
it's basically just
brute force our poor schizophrenic
friend here
and he's going down there and this tool
is designed it's got
paddles that are flighted on it it's got
things that basically can keep the hole
diameter
and this one's about halfway down into
the ground
and it just starts mixing the materials
so in miami the water table is very
shallow
and so what we on our very first
project provided is we went and talked
to him about having
two levels of parking below grade
and the first thing out of the developer
was there's no way
there's no way you can do that there's
no such thing as below grade parking in
miami
well why is the hydrostatic pressure is
too much
so we did the math we worked with a good
engineer
and lo and behold he came up with a
design that we could interlock
nine foot diameter columns put
six foot diameter columns around the
perimeter install sheet pile in them for
the subsequent excavation
and we excavated down then through
that soil crete it was absolutely just
uh smoking hot because uh you know the
hydration of the cement
no water dry
bone dry and then through that we
drilled with
an auger cast pile rig to put the
actually drilled foundations to take the
load of the structure
now as you pressure grout back out with
a cfa tool
that seals that area between where
you've cut the hole in
it still doesn't leak very effective
kind of gives you an eye down down and
up and down and up
okay jet grout i just threw this slide
in
because it's kind of fun this is crazy
crazy world for me the first time i saw
jet grouting i
i thought somebody's got to go to jail
this stuff looks crazy to me
and you can see that the based upon the
slide here
the purpose is you've got this really
bad ground down here
you're okay up here and you're okay
below here but you basically
maybe you've got a penetration that's
going to go through there maybe you need
to stabilize that
maybe that's where the contaminated
material is
maybe that's you know a lot of different
things
so same little
schizophrenic machine but now it's a jet
ground machine
and so how the jet drop machine goes
down it goes down to the bottom as
quickly as you can
some people actually install a pvc to
get them down quicker
so you get down to the bottom and you
start spraying and this
the velocity of the spray
is i'm going to use a technical term
thousands of psi
because i don't remember but
it has the ability to erode
that formation and as it erodes it's
mixing at the same time because it's
confined
so it's taken you know if you've got
sand sand is a
excellent application what if you had
what if this was clay would you do this
no why why
i saw your head move because the water
would be able to
finish very well yeah you can't erode
clay
really hard to road clay so in clay
you'd have to go to a more of a
mechanical like a
soil mixing application but you know
sandy silt silty sand it's
perfect for it so on this we've done
a test program we did down in oregon
we basically had to do a test we stopped
i think it was three or four feet from
the surface with the column
and then we had to exhume it to prove
them that we knew what we were doing
and it was unbelievable because it
looked just like that
and it was 12 and a half feet in
diameter
okay now to the real toys anybody know
what that is
this is a leffer 2.5 meter
oscillator it is a drilled shaft
installation device it has the capacity
to install permanent and temporary
casing
in excess of 262 feet
now why do i know 262 feet because
that's what i've done
i've done 262 feet next year we're going
to have to try and go
320 feet right now the record
is 262 feet
so this machine here which is called an
oscillator has an upper deck and a lower
deck
okay and each deck it's got a set of jaw
pads
so how it works is this casing right
here
those little holes right there is the
female end and you take the male in and
you drop it in there and you have these
bolts that go in there that suck it all
together
and make it look like a solid piece of
casing that's cool right
so you just keep adding them on the top
of it
these pieces might be five feet they
might be 20 feet they might be 25 feet
it depends on what you're doing if
you're under a bridge they need to be
short if they
if you have lots of headroom then they
need to be they can be longer
and of course weight if you have a three
meter casing that is
15 feet tall
10 foot in diameter how much does that
weigh
well the technical term is a lot
about 65 000 pounds so you have to watch
your sizes that way as well so this
machine
right here is working with
a dig crane and we'll we'll go to that
slide next
poor old malcolm drilling we don't even
drill these anymore
we actually dig them you can see the
teeth on that that jaw
those jaws open up just like this
it's lowered down make comes in contact
with the ground
it closes up when it closes up it grabs
and it bites down
and in so
a grab of that diameter comes up with
approximately well it's a dump truck
full
and one swoop and back down it goes
this oscillator right here is a 3.8
meter oscillator in other words it's
12.4 feet these are all
made out of germany and so it's all
metric
and our casing is all metric this
particular
casing right here is for caltrans and
it's actually 12 foot in diameter
so the purpose of what caltrans wanted
on this project which
which is called doyle drive was to
install
permanent 12-foot diameter casing down
180 feet
and really it was no trouble at all
there's the crane this is a duty cycle
crane so it has the ability to do two
things at the same time
and that has two drums that are tied
together so that they work well
five minutes almost done
so um very effective tool
this is an oscillator this was down in
louisiana this is a project that we were
asked to put
uh drilled shafts over 190 feet
underneath an existing bridge
so there it is there's the existing
bridge above there
the difference between an oscillator and
a rotator is that machine takes the
casing 360 degrees
or an oscillator oscillates the casing
back 22 degrees
other advantages of this technology as
we use this a lot over rivers
you could see who was doing them who was
doing the project on
aren't you doing the project on yeah i
put this in there just for you
it's a very famous project that was done
it was on uh
the show monster machines if you ever
saw monster machines
this is a project in benicia california
where the
contractor shut was shut down because
he was vibrating uh casing in the ground
and the fish were floating to the
surface
you guys know you know benicia right
it was a kiwi job and we negotiated a
deal to come in with
our oscillator equipment which basically
has no vibration
it has no noise it's other than the
diesel engines
and so big win-win for the state of
california
this in this region out here uh
they like to put structures on multiple
shafts instead of larger shafts
this was a sound transit project where
we had a bunch of
three meter or 10 foot diameter shafts
that went into a column that went up
into the structure
a similar project in washington dc was
put on
multiple drilled shafts with a pile cap
and then the
column goes up through that the
difference in time and
cost are significant so why is that
important for you guys to know
gotta understand what's out there so
that you can bring your client maybe
or your boss or whatever the best
possible idea
right
this is the infamous emergency
tunnel project where we put all this
iron together and no one got killed
to basically work seven days a week 24
hours a day
to create a 12 foot diameter sea camp
pile ring
to go down and save a 58 foot diameter
tunnel head
and it's never been done ever in the
world i i
thought i would add that granddaddy the
bg50
okay it's a nice young man he weighs
565 000 pounds
on this particular job he took five foot
diameter casing whoops don't go don't
don't
wrong hole five foot diameter casing 134
feet
by turning it down itself with nothing
no other help
no vibration just spinning it down
why can you do that now and you couldn't
do it 50 years ago
technology and hydraulics just wasn't
there
it's a four foot diameter continuous
flight auger where it's going down and
basically
taking limestone and chewing it up
see here it's it's with a kelly bar
turning the 12-foot diameter
auger
and this slide is to show you the
difference between old time and new time
put together
this is a crane mount just like the old
one you saw
you know we painted it's pretty and
everything but it's old
and we hooked it up with a duty cycle
crane
why to go out on lake washington and
install
12-foot diameter shafts down 180 feet or
something like that
and you'll notice here nothing can touch
the water
very impressive
so you can take this equipment here and
you can work it
45 degrees below freezing why because
we've done it
alaska we go up to alaska 45 degrees
below zero
obviously you never turn your machines
off they run 24 hours a day
and the other is of course there's dubai
125 degrees in the shade everybody
anybody been to dubai
right what's air conditioning for in a
car
to keep you from dying i'm convinced of
it
it doesn't actually cool the car because
it's too hot
but uh right there it's the same
schizophrenic machine right there
working in that kind of environment it's
impressive
i just put these in because they're
pretty
nice now you see
you got the good looks of of whoops
anyway that's over any questions oh wait
wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait
wait
dang it dang it dang it yeah turn it
back on
last slide faster than i can do it
i get it from there
i thought
okay perfect thank you
how do you like that that's a 300 ton
crane with a
three foot diameter continuous light
auger that's 150 foot long
now hey how about some questions
that's a lot of stuff guys any questions
yeah go ahead
have you ever been in the circus
it looks a lot like the circus uh when
we have like i say a big oscillator
spread with the big cranes and maybe the
big drill rigs and stuff like that when
that stuff comes in
it's for example one of the big cranes
is 13
trucks 13 trucks that includes the low
boys and
off deal for boom sections and so on so
forth
so when we come to town everybody knows
we come to we came to town
it is very expensive
it just doesn't work panama canal is not
really realistic
and uh you know the one thing that we've
done is we have our own truck to move
the heavy stuff
that kind of helps us out but to move a
large size drill rig from say seattle to
miami
is in excess of a hundred thousand
dollars
that has to be in your bid so we go
after the type of work that allows us to
do that
anybody else yes sir you showed several
technologies for ground improvement and
excavation support
can you speak a little bit about how
projects are normally set up is it a
specified technology or is it leave it
to you
to optimize technology well
you know it's kind of that teeming event
that allen referenced at the first of it
what's fun as contractors especially
contractors that you've got all these
toys
right not every drilling contractor has
all these toys that we have
and because it's expensive and you know
it has to be a commitment
but what you do is is you say okay what
are you trying to do in this project
now we get to say okay well you know we
could it could be sea camp piles or we
could use a cutter soil mixing
maybe we'd do a slurry wall system maybe
it's
small nail walls i mean there's a lot of
stuff that i haven't even shown you yet
but
that we do soldier piles and tie back
wood lagging
it just really depends on how you can
massage
because what you're trying to do is come
up with the best solution
for the client that's if you remember
anything from school
because when you go out there your job
is to come up with the best
solution for the client you do that
you can write your own ticket if you
forget it you think it's about you
you'll always you know it's different
but if you always make sure that you
take care of your client that may be
your boss it might be
the state might be whatever but if you
take care of your client
and bring the best possible solution to
every project
you will be successful
anything else well i have a question for
you
i've been an engineer for 30 years
contractors have been very smart not to
let me pull any levers
so that's a good thing but how do
engineers fit into the work you do
it's it's it's really good i mean we for
our particular company
we go outside for engineering we don't
do in-house engineering we have in-house
engineers but we
we work with them so basically we work
with firms that have
expertise in what we do you know it's
very difficult to just go out to
somebody that's
that's uh you know that's
not experienced or doesn't understand
what you're talking about
uh but it's critical because the fact of
the matter is
what we do is important and all that
kind of stuff
but the side that the engineer brings to
us is just as critical
just as critical how about the engineers
on your staff
we rely on them we have what we call an
engineering group
and for all the what we call high risk
projects
they basically review the projects for
risk assessment okay so they can report
to the
executive committee which i'm obviously
a member of
and say here's this project this is what
the risks are associated
okay well then what can we do to
mitigate those risks
well we can do this or we can do that or
there's no
mitigating that this is the risk we're
taking on by doing this job
okay proceed
uh uh that's that's the two things i do
uh oh okay so
scary i'm way in the back
excuse me
it's unbelievable if you look at uh
auger cast piles in the
in the past where 16-inch elements that
you drilled down 40 feet
and it's time to do a load test on it so
they put the cage you know they they
start pumping grout and they pump and
they pump and they come up a little bit
they create these giant bulges and they
test it and it's a miracle it passes
now it's time for the job and they drill
down at the bottom and they come out of
that hole like
they've been shot out of a gun that's
called
bad instrumentation this equipment that
you have now all this
these big drill rigs they have the
capacity to not only monitor the amount
of grout that's going in the ground
or the fluids are going into the cutter
soil mixing where it is to
to x and y it's it's phenomenal
and you know some of the the technology
that's out of there if you look in
europe which all
all the great technology starts in
europe starts in europe or it starts in
the orient
because they're forced into coming up
with better ideas we americans you know
we're just i thought it was all coming
out of this engineering building great
robots over there that's true
i say scary actually uh but uh
you know it's tech the the tech the qaqc
is a big deal for our company
and it really is we rely on the
engineers to help us
stay where we should be because there
there are good contractors
and there are the other guys
that are always trying to get away with
something so if you don't have qa or
qc qc you know they keep things in
tow it's it's a problem
anything else yes sir
i'm kind of i'm kind of excited about
doing drilled shafts with continuous
flight methods
uh with the some of this big equipment
that we have there when you think about
that you can do
a 36 or 48 inch diameter
drilled shaft with a with a continuous
stroke what that means
is with the computers that we have in
the machine
that we can go down and basically start
pumping grout
and the grout is we've got all these
additives now that we can put in the
grout to suspend it to keep it fluid for
us
and make sure that it doesn't separate
and go to you know go to heck on you
and then you just pump on your way out
the guy's looking at the gauge
as you're coming out and he's you know
he's not even pulling the lever because
the computer is lifting the the auger
out of the ground
and then you come up out of the ground
and you take a full depth drilled shaft
cage and you drop it in and it slides
all the way down to the bottom of the
hole
that's exciting because you if you do a
four foot diameter shaft
150 foot deep if you do one of those in
a day
in a conventional drilling type
application or with casing
you've done really really good but with
this technology with
with this new equipment you're doing
four and five a day
yes
well the reason another good reason to
have good engineers
uh working with you
is to be blunt uh there are a lot of
contractors that have
bad reputation okay
i mean it's some agencies i swear that's
when the classes they teach them when
they hire them out of school
is general contractor bad state
wonderful
general contractor bad state wonderful
because they're always thinking that
we're
trying to cheat them out of something so
it's important that that when something
comes up like a different site condition
or whatever because our work is the most
risky
work out there you know
the general contract we put all our
stuff in there and he puts two pieces of
plywood together
and he's arrogant like he's done
something special
right so it's important that that you
know you
you are your your last job you did you
are your reputation
if you tell someone you're going to do
something do it
if you f if you light up a person you
will always be a liar for the rest of
your life
that's for free by the way that's free
advice
yes sir so what kind of ratios
well um uh alan's going to cover that
question
it you know it really depends on what
you're you're trying to mix in
and you know how you formulate it the i
will tell you this that we have
we you know we we've got geotechnical
information that shows us
the difference uh you know the gradation
of the material that's there
and we're going to take a crack at what
we think our mix design is
we're going to do a test we're going to
take wet samples to see how it did
and then we might have to modify
because one of these these this
high-tech stuff you've got to do
you have to do test segments you've got
to be able to know that
that that's going to work you just don't
want to go out there and all of a sudden
you excavate down there's big giant
holes in it right
so what you're saying soils are like
people they're all different
amen okay
thank you i appreciate it so much