State-of-the-Art Technique to Appraise the Quality of Piling

The construction industry in Sri Lanka has seen a boom in the past two decades. The promising construction industry does not fail to endow a number of high-rise buildings in and around the commercial capital, Colombo. Due to the soil conditions, building loads, resource availability etc., Geotechnical experts quite often recommend bored and cast-in-situ pile as the deep foundation of choice in such high-rise buildings. However, the quality assurance systems for piling have not developed on a par with the increasing piling construction works. The cost and time are the major factors that set constraints against maintaining high quality assurance standards in any project. The selection of piles for testing has been the critical aspect in determining the cost and time of the quality assurance system. In this technique, scores were assigned to various aspects such as boring method, boring equipment, de-sanding method, flushing method, duration of borehole kept open before concreting, quality of the concrete, concreting method, cube strength of concrete, concrete wastage, pile integrity, etc. These scores have different weightings based on their individual importance. The piles scoring above a preset score would be selected for dynamic testing. The devised method to select piles for dynamic testing has proven extremely effective and efficient. The outcomes from the adopted quality assessment system had accentuated the importance of keeping track of the quality of each and every pile from the preconstruction stage itself.