Positive Reinforcement

An employee rewards and recognition program in your workplace has a positive impact on your bottom line By Barbara Bowes, Legacy Bowes Group For several years, baby boomer retirement issues were identified as the top priority in many human resource surveys. Today, the issue of employee engagement is taking over the primary lead. In fact, one survey reports that 94 per cent of participants identified employee engagement as their most important workforce challenge. Yet, what is employee engagement and why should Piling Canada readers be concerned? Employee engagement refers to whether or not employees have a positive or negative approach to their work and whether or not employees are willing and/or not willing to perform at their best in ways that further benefit their employer. The reason for concern is that employee engagement has a direct impact on business success and profitability.

Drilling the Undrillable

M. Johnston Construction, Ltd. always comes up with something to win the job

Safety People First

As a leader in Canada's foundation contracting industry, Deep Foundations installs all major types of piles, but its strength has always been its people

Rebuilding a B.C. Bridge

Construction Drilling Inc. builds the foundation for the new Johnson Street Bridge in Victoria, B.C.

Connecting to a Global Market

The ins and outs of buying and selling used heavy construction equipment online

Creative Pultrusions, Inc. Hires Ted Harris as Market Development Engineer

Creative Pultrusions, Inc. (CPI) welcomed Ted Harris on March 17, 2014. Ted has over 25 years of product design, development and engineering experience in manufacturing. He also has extensive experience working in sales, marketing and business development. He has a degree in aerospace engineering and is a registered professional engineer in mechanical engineering in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Harris joins CPI as market development engineer, and will be responsible for marketing the TRANSONITE® Panel Product Line.

Hercules Machinery Brings Renowned HPM Drilling Equipment to North America

HMC is partnering with HPM, Srl as the exclusive dealer for HPM foundation drills in North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Barker Ross Expands to Supply Piling Specialists Globally

Due to the continued success of its piling and geotechnical operation in the UK, Barker Ross is expanding to supply piling specialists globally

BAUER Manufacturing Inc. Earns ISO and API Certification

Industry News

Independence Tube Achieves ISO 9001:2008 Certification

Independence Tube Corporation is proud to announce it has achieved ISO 9001:2008 certification at their manufacturing divisions in Chicago and Marseilles, Ill. and Decatur, Ala. through registrar SAI Global. The road to ISO 9001:2008 certification for Independence Tube included divisional initial assessments and gap analyses, Quality Management Systems, Document Management Systems and Corrective and Preventative Action Systems development, internal audits, management system reviews and closure of all divisional quality system corrective actions, prior to registration audits at each division with SAI Global. The ISO 9001:2008 certification recognizes that the policies, practices and procedures of our company ensure consistent quality in the product and services we provide. Clients can be confident Independence Tube is dedicated to maintaining the highest efficiency and responsiveness in achieving our ultimate goal - guaranteed client satisfaction.=

Hammer & Steel, Inc. Provides Steel Sheet Piling for Construction of New SMART System

Sonoma and Marin have begun joint construction of an area transit system

Bermingham Contributes Construction and Equipment Expertise to Wheatstone LNG Project in Western Australia

LNG liquefaction and export plant will have an annual capacity of 15 million tonnes of LNG

APPLE VIII Set to Impact Deep Foundation Industry

Over the course of the past several years, GRL Engineers, Inc. (GRL) has introduced a series of six “APPLE” drop hammers. The devices are used in dynamic load testing of any type of deep foundation (ASTM D4945 Standard Test Method for High- Strain Dynamic Testing of Piles), in cases when a pile driving hammer or another suitable drop weight is not readily available at a jobsite. GRL has now added two more APPLES to the lineup. The APPLE VII is designed specifically to test helical piles. The APPLE VIII is a modular system with a maximum ram weight of 80 tons - double the maximum weight of the APPLE IV, previously the largest of GRL's drop hammers. With this addition, the APPLE devices now cover a large range of test loads, up to 8,000 tons under ideal conditions. Dynamic load tests are an economical alternative to static load tests, and may also meet the requirements of the Rapid Load Test standard ASTM D7383, particularly with the availability of the heavier APPLES. Prior to the test, GRL performs an analysis and recommends an adequate APPLE for each situation, from micropiles to large, high capacity drilled shafts. After the test, it furnishes a detailed test report that includes a simulated static load test in the form of a calculated load-set curve.

Liebherr Piling Rig Has to Cope with Restricted Workspace in Quebec

In recent years, Liebherr’s deep foundation equipment has become increasingly popular on the North American continent, especially in Canada.

Paying Once; Paying Twice

How vacating liens just doubled in price

In-house Training Mitigates Boomer Retirement Risk

Smart organizations can begin planning now By Barbara J. Bowes, Legacy Bowes Group We all know it's been happening - the baby boomer exit, that is. To date, it's been fairly innocuous. Yet, businesses are being impacted by baby boomer retirements. For instance, many small business owners have had to look to the potential of mergers and acquisitions as a means to exit their business. That's because the challenge for small businesses is that not many organizations can afford to have an up-and-coming leader working as an “understudy,” especially for a lengthy period; it's just too expensive. The result is a loss of corporate knowledge within many organizations, big and small, and the creation of a growing leadership gap. Couple this challenge with the fact that the leadership skills needed to take organizations successfully into the future are quite different than today's technical skills and management style. In fact, current leaders perceive that the one key skill missing from the up-and-coming group of leaders is collaboration. In their view, collaboration is important especially because of the demand to do more with less accompanied by a continually changing global marketplace. In turn, these demands will see an increased use not only of cross-functional teams and interdepartmental reliance but also project teams that span across different agencies and/or corporations.

Optimizing Driven Pile Foundations

Design-build and remote PDA testing By John C. Ryan, Ph.D., P.Eng., Ryan Structural Engineers, LLC Sharpening the proverbial pencilIt's a familiar saying, and in an engineering office it may sound like this: “Four per cent overstress ... maybe I can sharpen the pencil and make it work.” Despite the fact that a given balance between load and resistance cannot be “made to work,” there is some insight that this euphemism provides. In reality, deeper understanding of a problem is being sought with the intent of removing uncertainty. As engineers, we are inherently and appropriately risk averse. If we have not personally proven or maintained control of an idea from inception to completion, we become skeptical of it. In practice, this tends result in unnecessary conservatism, particularly where often-disconnected design professionals have tangential or overlapping responsibility. Such is the case with driven piles. Much of the excessive conservatism that persists in the driven pile industry can be reduced significantly through a design method that treats the pile foundation as a performance specified component. Utilizing bid solicitations, which include pile design criteria and subsurface reports, foundation contractors, along with a driven-pile specialty engineer, can provide design-build solutions with pricing and schedule to be evaluated for best value. Further, by incorporating remote dynamic pile testing within the scope of the design-build team, the most optimized foundation and installation schedule can be achieved. If the pile specialty engineer and contractor team are engaged from concept through design and certification, the pencil is always sharp with respect to foundation design.

Strength in Numbers

SPL Consultants Limited offers a wealth of engineering expertise under one roof By Kelly Gray Strength in numbers is behind the growth of Toronto-based SPL Consultants Limited (SPL), a full-service, multidisciplinary ground engineering firm with offices in seven locations (Toronto, Vaughan, Cambridge, Ottawa, Markham, Barrie and Collingwood) across Ontario. The company's wide-ranging specialties have allowed it to grow in five years from a group of five employees to a cohort that offers more than 250 highly experienced engineers, environmental scientists, hydrogeologists, technologists, biologists and support personnel. Since opening in 2009, SPL's capabilities have had them working on ten of the top 100 jobs in the country as cited by Renew, and had industry watchdog Ernst & Young nominate them for Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year. Behind their success is a willingness to be market sensitive. “We have grown thanks to our quality of service, our ability to bring value into the engineering model and establish fair pricing,” said SPL Consultants principal, Fanyu Zhu, Ph.D., P.Eng., who adds that they are competitive without sacrificing quality. “We saw from the outset that there was a business opportunity that could be maximized if we could attract the people with the right skill sets and talent. I believe we have done just this.”

Family Connection

Prairie piling company Cam-Arrow Drilling demonstrates the benefits of generational companies