DFI Helical Foundation & Tiebacks Committee MeetingWorld of Concrete - 01/23/08
For the second year in a row the Helical Foundations and Tiebacks committee of the DFI met in Las Vegas, Nevada during the absolutely massive World of Concrete convention. There were 22 people in attendance. After the usual approval of the minutes and agenda review, the committee got down to business.
What stood out at the beginning of this meeting was the person leading the meeting was Howard Perko, not Bob Hoyt. Howard announced that at the end of the previous committee meeting in Colorado Springs, Bob stepped down as chair of the committee. Howard (already vice-chair) was appointed chair by the DFI.
This made the first official order of business to elect a new vice chair. The sole nomination was for Gary Seider of Chance/Hubell. It was seconded, and before he knew what hit him, he was the vice-chair. One interesting note on Gary’s election is that this is the first time a representative from a manufacturing company has held either the chair or vice-chair position.
Next up was a post mortem on the committee’s recent seminar in New Orleans, LA. Jeff Kortan reported that after three straight years of seminar attendance growth, this year saw a decline. In fact, attendance was down about 30% from last year’s event in Newark, NJ. Despite the reduced attendance, feedback from the attendees was positive. The major requests for next year’s seminar were to include more topics on seismic issues and lateral loading.
Speaking of next year’s seminar, the committee elected Mamdouh Nasr (member of HPW Review Panel) to head up the planning. The preliminary destination will be the Los Angeles area, and the committee is looking towards the first week of November.
Former committee chair Bob Hoyt reported on the status of the Power Point presentation that the committee prepared and passed along to the DFI’s technical advisory committee. There has been no word as of yet on the progress of the TAC. Bob will provide an update at the annual conference in NYC.
On to the specifications. The helical committee continues to focus much of its' energy on the creation of general specifications for various applications of helical piles. First to be discussed was the progress of the helical anchor spec. This spec has already been approved by the helical committee and has been sent to the TAC for review. The TAC has returned the spec with comments. These comments were addressed by the helical committee and the revised spec was sent back to the TAC for final approval. A couple of the revisions of note included adding a “definitions” section to explain terms like “crowding” during helical pile installation, and removing the load testing section since load testing is not always required.
The compression spec was up next. Phil Slemmons is the lead on this spec, and he was not in attendance for the meeting. The current status of the spec was on hand however. Members of the committee again were quick to point out that these specifications are to be written as performance specs, not prescriptive specs. The current version of the compression spec does have sections that are prescriptive and need to be changed.
Lastly, the soil nail spec was on the table. Again, the prescriptive vs. performance issue was addressed. In particular, the sections on the qualifications of installers, engineers and manufacturers were a hot topic. There was agreement (although not nearly unanimous) that the qualifications section should be left to the “judgment” of the engineer of record. Ultimately, it boiled down to: should the DFI be policing who can and cannot install soil nails? The answer was no.
Some how, even with all that got accomplished, the meeting ended 30 minutes early!
Richard A. Davis
Editor - Helical Pier World
