Pile Design Consulting

SGH assists Berkel with many aspects of their pile design and installation planning. Highlights of our work include the following:

• Tabulating loads, calculating pile strength and stiffness, and verifying lateral load resistance
• Designing piles for specific sites and projects
• Preparing shop drawings and pile layout drawings
• Designing installation equipment and load testing apparatuses
• Coordinating foundation designs with superstructure designers and plan reviewers

As part of this effort, SGH developed computational tools for optimizing the number of piles in each pile cap for cases where the most efficient pile layout is not typical due to asymmetrical loading. Our approach has allowed us to compare numerous pile configurations for hundreds of pile caps at many different Berkel projects. By automating the design process, which previously involved burdensome iterations of manual calculations, we developed solutions providing the required capacity with the minimum number of piles, saving the contractor significant expense.