Category: PILLAR Talk

Are you counting pennies or benjamins?

Post author By Steve
Post date August 2, 2016

As an engineer, I am very analytical and linear in my thought process. This is natural and almost expected as I deal with equations following specific procedures to arrive at design solutions. After all, there is no gray in engineering – it is either black or white. I refer to this thought process as counting pennies – that is examining every detail down to the smallest one to make sure everything is accounted. Because of my ethical obligations to protect the public with my designs, I, as an engineer, have to count and take into account these pennies to avoid potentially disastrous situations.

As the leader of PILLAR, my thought process is different. I can’t get bogged down with all the little details; otherwise nothing moves forward at the pace it needs to because people are waiting on me. I need to think bigger and broader and count the Benjamins. That doesn’t mean the details aren’t important. On the contrary, they are very important and can’t be ignored. Here is where leadership comes into play. As I don’t have the resources to examine all the little details, I have to responsibly delegate them by providing a clear vision with enough direction to my employees.

In short, I have to lead not do.

When I focus on the Benjamins – the big picture or total package – and let other employees count the pennies, I have to provide the tools and atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork to maximize individual strengths in order to achieve maximum performance in a timely fashion to either meet deadlines, exceed expectations, or act quickly enough to stay ahead of the competition. I also have to know my employees well enough to put them in a place where they can confidently work the details and excel at what they are good at. When my employees take a portion of the bigger picture, they accept responsibility for taking care of and focusing on their stack of pennies.

All this dialog of pennies and Benjamins is not a discussion on revenue or profit. Rather it is a discussion on short-term versus long-term thinking. As a leader, focusing on pennies is short-term thinking dealing with an event happening now or in the immediate near future. Focusing on Benjamins is long-term thinking dealing with the future or the direction of the firm. Dealing with pennies is like a horse with blinders. You can only see what is in front of you with a very limited and narrow view of the scene. You cannot get stuck in one pile of details for any length of time, lest some of the other piles get either too enormous to overcome or dwindle away to nothing from lack of attention. If you’re focusing on Benjamins, you’re gazing on the wider view of the horizon.

As a by-product of focusing on the Benjamins and relinquishing control of the pennies, I have fostered a cultural shift of accountability and responsibility while simultaneously empowering those who can make it happen. When you empower others, growth occurs exponentially not linearly. Empowerment comes in several forms. Simply put, it is removing roadblocks thereby building an atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork. Empowerment also fosters an environment that nurtures a positive spirit, pride, and loyalty.

Focusing on Benjamins allows me the time to reflect on our firm’s vision and purpose and formulate a path on how to fulfill them. It is easy to get caught up in working a pile of pennies as problems arise. I call this putting out brush fires. Unfortunately, this leads one to scramble with no sense of direction or purpose and eventually reflects and resonates with employees by stagnating any growth, duty, or loyalty.

I’ll admit focusing on the Benjamins is a continuous work in progress and there are still times I get stuck in the piles of pennies. As the firm grows and I mature, I like to think I am getting better at looking at Benjamins.

How about you? Are you focusing on pennies or Benjamins?

What PILLAR Asset Management Means For Your Company

Post author By Steve
Post date January 28, 2016

Is “asset management” more than a buzz-word to you and your organization? Are regulations and costs leading you to question whether you need a better understanding of your assets and their future value, risks, and needs?

You may find yourself wondering “How can we boost asset life-span?” or “Has the cost of this asset been justified?” PILLAR provides asset management to help you with the entire process of properly planning, building, operating, maintaining, upgrading and decommissioning assets.

This is big-picture thinking and long-term strategizing. For assets to be sustainable and cost-effective, you need a broad analysis of engineering, economics, risk management and user needs.

With appropriate asset management methods, you can answer key questions about:

FINANCES

Long-term funding, including grants and loans
Potential budget fluctuations
Total cost of ownership

DECISION-MAKING

Current state of assets
Maintenance scheduling
Rehabilitation vs. replacement
Risk analysis
Gaps in institutional knowledge
Internal and external communication

REQUIREMENTS

Technological and material life-spans
Current and future regulations
User demands

Asset management results in better business practices and a more proactive mindset. It allows your organization to identify strengths as well as weaknesses, creating a better foundation for decision-making.

With systematic and coordinated asset management techniques, PILLAR will provide your organization with the tools to succeed now and in the future.

Save Lives

Safety Summit 2016

Post author By Steve
Post date January 27, 2016

Hello friends, colleagues, and clients,

I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting at the 3rd Annual BLR Safety Summit, held April 4-6, 2016 in Austin, Texas.

I will kick off the Summit with a Preconference Workshop on job hazard analysis and risk management, explaining how you can go beyond basic hazard identification to examine your workplace’s biggest safety and health hazards.

During the main conference’s Strategic Safety Management breakout, my session will focus on developing a behavior-reinforcement plan to identify key outcomes and position workers for success.

The Summit will also feature EHS metrics, safety culture construct, job hazard analysis, emergency planning, OSHA’s new rapid response investigations, mobile technologies, and so much more! This powerful conference is crafted for safety and risk managers, consultants, and HR professionals who need to stay up-to-date on the latest workplace safety management and compliance strategies.

I’d like to extend an exclusive discount on conference registration. Use coupon code SPEAKER50 to get an instant $50 off. (And if you register before February 1, you can also take advantage of the $100 early bird discount!)

Visit the Safety Summit website to register or learn more!

I hope you’ll join me and the most progressive leaders in occupational health and safety at this unmatched event.

Sincerely,

John J. Meola CSP, ARM
PILLAR Inc.

Save Face

Choosing a commercial surveyor

Post author By Steve
Post date January 19, 2016

Surveying is a vital step in commercial property development and construction. Land surveyors are licensed professionals who are knowledgeable about local, state and federal requirements. They also provide important information for your attorney, banker, realtor, architect and builder.

An experienced surveyor will advise you on what type of survey—boundary, topographic, land title, or mortgage inspection—should be performed. As a basis for contracts, resale, subdividing and engineering, surveying provides a foundation for many key decisions in property transactions and development. The surveyor can be a valuable resource in environmental analysis and land disputes.

Training, expertise and technical resources are key considerations when choosing a surveyor. Their understanding of existing records and property descriptions as well as their skills in mapping, identifying defects and setting monuments, as well as documentation and communicating with other parties, are essential to a job well done.

Technical aspects of surveying include advanced data, measuring and reporting methods. The modern theodolite or total station is an expensive, highly specialized piece of equipment that can save data into internal registering units or external storage. Photogrammetric scanning, satellite navigation systems, airborne LIDAR and GIS data application have greatly expanded the accuracy and effectiveness of modern surveying.

Therefore, the cost of surveying is only one factor when comparing service providers. Recommendations, resources and experience must be considered as well. Expertise, skills and judgment—all part of the high quality, problem solving approach used by our staff—come standard with PILLAR surveying services.

Save Face Save Time

Keeping and Maintaining Inventory for Roadway Infrastructure

Post author By Steve
Post date December 31, 2015

“Now where did I put that (insert item here)?” This is a question I ask myself more than I should. Usually I’m looking for some sort of tool around my house that doesn’t get used very often, but, when I need it I need it now. The wrench to remove the element in my water heater is a good example. When an element goes out it’s usually at the worst possible time.

So the quicker I can find the wrench the quicker I can get the heater fixed. I have gotten better about keeping tools, etc. organized and one thing that has helped me with this is to actually bring home skills that I’ve learned at from work. While keeping track of tools around the house and maintaining incredible volumes of infrastructure are vastly different, there is a commonality in that the core of managing both of these is to know what you have and where it is located.

A drainage pipe can be similar to that missing household wrench in that it is an asset that you may lose track of. The original maintenance crew moves on, retires, etc. and they forgot to tell the new crew about it, the maintenance crew doesn’t have access to the original plans, or the area gets overgrown with brush, etc. Then all of a sudden it rains one day and water is backed into the road. Just like that when you need it you can’t find it.

One of the areas PILLAR helps our infrastructure clients is keeping and maintaining an infrastructure inventory. The roadway infrastructure we deal with was mostly built in the mid1900s with some dating back ever further. Most of these roads had design drawings or plans but not always follow up drawings or asbuilts to show field changes made to plans.

We have incorporated a number of methods and technologies to help our clients collect their inventory, and continuously and easily update what is added and removed. We have used everything from;

“Boots on the ground” location where we visually identify an asset location using metal detectors, brush axes, shovels, and an iPad loaded with a specialized application InfraTrak®. This allows us to add inventory, edit and remove inventory as well as log inventory conditions and generate work orders from the field. InfraTrak® works disconnected from the internet with information synced to the cloud where the collected field data is shared with office personnel.
Mobile LiDAR which generates a digital 3D model of the roadway with corresponding spherical photos taken at specified intervals.
Digitizing 5060 year old roadway plans.
Survey and GIS grade asset inventory mapping utilizing traditional GPS and survey equipment.
Development of a specialized department to explore the use of our cutting edge drone for the generation of digital 3D models, high resolution digital orthophotography, videos, and thermal imaging.

These methods have allowed us to inventory municipal utilities as well as hundreds of miles of roadway for our clients to help them know what they have and where it is located.

Pillar, Inc.’s staff has been involved with highway maintenance and incident response on many different projects with 40+ years of combined experience. We can generate, collect, and maintain digital asset inventories for your existing infrastructure. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Save Face

Land Surveying: Is what I found what was set?

Post author By Steve
Post date November 30, 2015

“IP”… I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at a survey plat (mostly older ones) and cringed when I saw those two little letters at the change in direction of a boundary line.

Over the last almost 20 years of being a Land Surveyor, I think that I have come across almost everything imaginable at a corner of a parcel of land. Let me elaborate. A piece of iron rebar, iron rod, threaded rod, pipe, 6″ nail, 8” nail, a 16 penny nail, a railroad spike, a steering knuckle of (insert your junk car name here), an axle, a roof bolt, a section of drill steel, an actual wooden stake or a pinch pipe. I could continue on but I think you get the idea. But is what I found in the field what the original surveyor actually set or found as a corner monument or just some random piece of junk? Or what I like to call “the rod du jour.”

Virginia Code 18VAC1020370 (section 4) mandates that “as a requisite for completion of the work product, each land boundary survey of a tract or parcel of land shall be monumented with objects made of permanent material at all corners and changes of direction on the land boundary”. This section of code itself leaves a lot of latitude for a choice of monument at a property corner. While other sections of the code place a minimum standard on the procedures and practices of land surveying, why hasn’t there been a standard set for boundary monuments other than “shall be made of permanent material?”

I know that all of the items that I stated as discovered while performing a boundary survey are in fact “made of permanent material” and technically they have satisfied the Virginia standards. But there is a great deal of merit placed on a corner marker that is specially described on a survey plat. “IP” doesn’t give me much description when I’m out there on the job. All it takes is a few other characters on a plat like “1/2″ iron rod or 1” pipe or even a steering knuckle of (insert your junk car name here) and all of the sudden, voila, I found what the last surveyor set or found 50 years ago. There is a legal term that we use for items we find near a property corner that don’t include these little adjectives: “Prima Facie” or face value. In other words “I have found something near the property corner; if it works then it just happens to work,” not because it was specifically placed there. But is there something else there?

All I can say is that I know 50 years from now some Land surveyor will be looking at my maps while in the field and says “yep here it is, a ½” iron rod set at the corner”. Not standing there scratching their head looking for an “IP.”

Pillar, Inc.’s staff has been involved with highway maintenance and incident response on many different projects with 40+ years of combined experience. We can help write an O&M plan including Snow and Ice Control procedures for your next project. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Click here to download the PILLAR Talk November 2015 PDF.

Save Face Save Lives Save Time

Snow and Ice Control: Roadway Winter Preparations

Post author By Steve
Post date November 10, 2015

Pillar, Inc. offers consulting services to Public Private Partnerships, specifically regarding the many different Operations and Maintenance services these specialized procurements include.

In order to better educate our partners, as part of our Continuous Improvement philosophy, Pillar periodically provides these informational O&M fact sheets to interested parties.

NOW is the season to order your stockpiles of salt, abrasives, and pre-treatment liquids. Actually, this order should have been placed back in July, but we’ll bring you up to speed just the same.

Asset Managers are tasked with taking care of infrastructure, such as roadways and related facilities. This includes budget, cash flow, finance, credit, etc. Basically, here is some advice from our school of experience to help you manage cash flow with a minimum of pain and a few easy to execute tips.

Salt. A simple chemical and relatively inexpensive, but in the quantities we use it, with prices from $75-$125 per ton, we need to manage our stockpiles carefully. Industry standards call for having at least 100% of your “worst case” winter inventory on hand before the season starts. While this is a good rule of thumb, it can be costly both in inventory holding costs as well as capital outlays to build a larger than necessary containment facility.

Consider the following operational tips:

If your project is located within a reasonable distance (1-2 hours) of the shipping point, consider ordering less salt at the beginning of the season and being very proactive in re-ordering salt. In order to do this, you must do it with forethought, not a guess.

Place a resupply order a day before the next event happens. You can estimate the salt you will use during the event and simply order that amount before it snows. Your project will be first in line to receive salt after the storm while other projects are ordering after the event and waiting longer.

If your project is too small to demand “first priority” delivery, negotiate this into your purchase agreements; it may cost more per ton but save you the corresponding outlay for facility and holding costs.

Delays in shipment are usually due to lack of trucking availability, especially at the rate negotiated by the salt supplier with their independent carriers. Consider an FOB price to provide flexibility and redundancy: You go pick up the salt with your own truck fleet rather than wait for non-guaranteed resupply by the vendor’s trucks.

Consider keeping the doors of your facility open at offhours or weekends. Many DOT’s will only receive salt between normal operating hours of 8am-4:30pm Monday-Friday, thus creating a bottleneck in the supply lines. If you tell the shipper “we’ll accept your salt 24-7” you’ll probably get it quicker.

The extra few dollars in staff overtime is minor compared to the cost of not having the salt.

At some point the shipper’s dispatch personnel will call you to confirm shipment. Have your on-call staff save this number into their phone. It is likely this trucking company will be your exclusive supplier. You can get more up-to-date delivery information from the shipper than going through your supplier, who is only going to contact the shipper and email you back. Short circuit the runaround.

Use less salt. This seems elementary, but you would be surprised at how much salt can be wasted by ineffective salting strategies or uncalibrated or out-of-adjustment equipment.

Salt at the right time.
Re-calibrate your equipment if usage seems excessive.
Use a well thought out and sufficiently detailed pre-treatment plan to minimize the usage of salt.
These are all standard procedures, probably already written into your O&M Plan, but is it really happening on the project?

What is the “right” time to apply salt? There are now rugged and accurate sensors available to measure the slickness of pavement in real time.

Instead of guessing when to put down salt, you can now accurately and remotely measure pavement friction and apply salt if needed, not when it “feels right”. Keep an eye on the temperatures. Salting at 9am at 31 degrees on a slushy road is not cost effective if the forecast is for sunny skies and a high temperature of 40 degrees.

“If we have it, let’s use it.” This mentality is a problem with oversized inventories of any material. It’s just human nature. If your client gave you their existing facility, remember that facility may have been sized to service more road network than you now have. Resist the urge to fill it up.

What is your real “worst case” winter scenario? Re-examine the assumptions used to calculate your annual usage. Is it a case of “that’s how we have always done it”? How much salt is left every year to sit all summer long? If it’s more than 1/3rd of your annual usage, you are probably buying too much. That’s a lot of money sitting there in a pile all summer.

While these ideas may sound counterintuitive to some readers, remember that we are managing the road, our crews and our materials and should be looking for efficiencies and improvements wherever they may exist. Because a lot of money goes into snow & ice control, it’s a good place to look for improvements. If you are satisfied with your current results and expenditures, then keep doing it. Our Asset Management philosophy at Pillar tells us to keep looking for improvements. We think there are methods and techniques to reduce or delay capital expenditures without affecting performance.

Control procedures for your next project. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Dan Dennis, PE | Senior Project Manager / P3
Dan@Pillarens.com
8042401179
PILLAR, Inc.

To download a PDF version of PillarTalk 2015 please click here.

Save Lives

Violence In The Workplace

Post author By Steve
Post date September 29, 2015

In the US, public health authorities and OSHA have identified violence as the fastest growing occupational safety hazard and are taking steps to address this issue. Some worker populations are more at risk than others, such as delivery drivers, cab drivers, health care workers, social workers, mental health workers, and others who carry cash or deal with large numbers of people. Practically all working persons have some degree of exposure to violence simply because we spend about 30% of our lives ‘on the job’.

The most obvious targets are persons whom seem likely to have cash or valuables in their possession. The amount doesn’t matter. This is why a lot of vehicles are marked with ‘Driver Carries No Cash’ signage. Or convenience stores, where we can see the sign posted stating ‘Not more the $20 in the till’ or other limitations. Drop safes are also used there to limit the amount of cash on hand.

Sadly, many unbalanced people seem particularly fixated on resolving even minuscule disputes with a firearm. Maybe this is due in part to our upbringing in a culture based on Hollywoodstyle lessons of violence and guns. Firearms are relatively easy weapons, which has the effect of making a bad situation worse. A less reliable method, for example, would be poisoning your boss because he fired you.

We have learned a few basic truths about what drives some people to become violent toward their coworkers, but human nature is infinitely changeable, and keeps coming up with even more unpredictable behaviors.

Very often, there is a history or pattern of bad behavior preceding the blowup. This pattern is often ignored or ascribed to strange personality or otherwise dismissed. No one wants to be confrontational over it, because we all want to ‘get along’, right?

Take threats seriously. If someone is unbalanced, they will often vocalize their revenge, 2/3 anger or fantasy. It’s part of their relief mechanism.

Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Late night, remote areas, drunk or impaired motorists, disoriented people, vagrants, criminal activity, drug deals, etc. These are all elements of potential trouble.

Be proactive against danger. Getting out of work late into a dark parking lot? Use your car alarm fob as a warning device.

Stay connected. Listen to the local radio or at least have the emergency alert app loaded on your phone. Social media is increasingly being used to make wide notice of events. (Remember to NEVER text while driving!)

Protect yourself at all times. Usually by maintaining distance, such as avoiding the scene of an event unless you have no choice. This is a judgment call based on a lot of factors

Keep in mind, EMS or police response via 911 calls are not always exactly on target. Your location may not be known or found with any degree of precision. Be mindful of your exact location address and definitive landmarks and directional clues for describing your exact whereabouts.

Do not engage a situation. With something like Road Rage, further engagement usually only worsens an incident.

The ‘disabled motorist’ scam is a common ruse used by criminals. Although, most of us ‘want to help’,remember, we are not ‘Road Rangers’ or AAA.

Report unusual incidents such as highly suspicious behavior, unauthorized presence, someone following you or making threatening gestures, brandishing a firearm, random gunfire, unusual or other unpredictable behavior, etc. This is highl judgmental, but be aware of your situation at all times. If there is no report, the police cannot “connect the dots” to reveal a pattern or establish a presence or timeline.

Many workplace incidents are gradually precipitated by some type of domestic or romantic issue or other underlying psychosocial dysfunction in a persons life. “They’re a loner” or “They’re weird.” The ‘job’ itself usually does not have enough emotive power over a person to cause the snap.

The grudge is usually not about work or money, it’s about respect, personality, cred, affection, custody of the kids, etc. Work is just the most convenient place to make it happen. Plus, there’s a built in audience, and maybe more opportunity to harm others.

Preventive planning includes preemployment screening, simple behavioral psychology tests and questionnaires, reference checks, etc. If it’s a highly sensitive position, you should consider doing a hair sample test for drug use history.

Offering counseling as part of your benefits package is kind of like putting padlocks on the pantry door they keep out the honest thieves. But it might help an individual with mental difficulties.

Defensive planning includes having a ‘safe room’ that has strong locks on any doors, a means of communication and defensive objects. Large offices with long shifts would potentially benefit from a safe room.

If something happens, record the details like time, place, descriptive information, etc. Take cell phone pictures or video only if it is safe to do so. Carjacking: Give the keys and walk away. Do not try to defend your vehicle. Report the incident immediately. Law enforcement will take over.

Criminal robbery: Surrender your cash or property without question, do not try to fight back, unless there is no alternative. Report the incident immediately. Get a description as 3/3 best as possible.

Avoid carrying large amounts of cash, display of expensive bling, etc. We all want to look good, but this encourages criminals. Save it for when not in public.

Avoid common hazards: drug deals, meth labs, using /smoking dope in public, etc. Avoid involvement, do not acknowledge and do not interfere. In other
words, mind your own business. Report the incident in detail as soon as it is safe to do so. Protect the scene or evidence.

For what it’s worth, remember the old expression: “Jack Frost is the best cop in the world”. Translation: the colder it is, the less erratic or criminal a person’s behavior. This comes from the realm of junk science, but a lot of law enforcement folks will back it up. BTW, this winter is supposed to be ‘mild’.

Some of this advice is counterintuitive to our culture of independence and may be distasteful to some people. It is not normally in our nature to ‘give up’ and not defend ourselves when threatened. However, statistics have shown that nonaggression will generally offer the greatest avenue to safety.

PILLAR Inc. was established in 2002 with the goal of providing a unique and systematic approach to civil engineering, surveying, management, and safety to ensure the efficient and successful completion of projects large and small for the betterment of our community. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Download September PILLAR Talk PDF Here!

Save Time

Time

Post author By Steve
Post date August 28, 2015

How many times have you asked, “where did the time go?” As my oldest child embarks into college life, as I reflect on living in the same town now for 16 years, and as I approach starting the 14th year of PILLAR, I find myself asking that question more and more.

Frankly, I am beginning to sound like my parents. As a youngster, I didn’t understand what they meant by time going by so fast. My kids don’t understand it either since they still have “boredom episodes.” I can’t remember the last time I was bored and couldn’t find anything to do. Time just seems to be flying.

The beauty with time is we all have the same 24 hours in a given day. It is up to you to see what you can make of those 24 hours. You could be a slave to someone else’s time or you can master your own time. Do you find you simply don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish what you want done? The key is productive time management of your goals and priorities. You need to identify your goals and priorities and then schedule realistic timeframes to complete or reach them. If the task isn’t a priority or on the path to reach your goals, it is a time snatcher so don’t fall into the snare. Move on and don’t do that task. Every week, review your goals, objectives and priorities for the year, month and week to create your weekly schedule. This will keep you on your path.

When creating your weekly schedule, you want to make sure you block out task time and assign realistic times to those tasks. Too often we only schedule time for meetings and appointments. Block out time to complete specific tasks and if you aren’t finished by the end of that time, stop so you can move onto your next priority. The key is to stop when you reach the time limit. Otherwise, the proverbial train has come off the tracks will occur with your schedule. Track your time so you can adjust how much time you need to block out to complete the task.

Life isn’t all chasing fish.

Protect your family and your down time. Just like scheduling work time, you need to schedule family and personal down time. You need to make yourself available to spend time with loved ones and develop those relationships as well as recharge your batteries with a little “me” time. If you don’t, you’ll be wondering what happened to the last 18 years during move-in day.

Leverage your time to double-dip or “kill two birds with one stone”. Lunch time is the easiest to perform this method. Pick a couple days a week to go out with someone you don’t know well, but with whom you would like to develop a relationship (business or otherwise). If you are traveling to a jobsite, schedule a meeting with a colleague or representative in the area or on the way to and from the site. Make the time work for you.

Schedule time to take care of you. Yes, this means getting enough sleep, exercising regularly and eating nutritious foods. You need to energize yourself and mentally prepare for the day. If you don’t take time to take care of yourself, it won’t matter how you manage your time as you won’t be around. Getting enough sleep, regular exercise and nutritious eating habits helps you mentally and physically prepare yourself for the day.

We are all given 24 hours in a day. You could be a slave to someone else’s time or you can master your own time. The choice is yours. Which do you choose?

Save Face Save Time

Geotechnical Subsurface Investigations

Post author By Steve
Post date July 15, 2015

In my years of being involved in the civil engineering realm, several entities, both private and public, have undervalued the information revealed and achieved from a geotechnical or subsurface investigation program.

It has been my experience that the most challenging aspects of any construction project is getting structural foundation elements out of the ground or providing a stable subgrade for various types of roadway pavements, as just a few examples.

A geotechnical investigation looks at the site subsurface for various things such as:

Depth to rock, rock type
Soil types and depths, their consistency (cohesive soil: clays) and/or relative density (cohesionless soils: sands)
Water features and depths, depth to water table, seasonal estimations of water table fluctuations, capillary rise

Industry accepted techniques have been established such as Standard Penetration Tests which can be correlated to soil properties such as cohesion, angles of internal friction, and rock strengths. These values are consistently used for design of foundation systems, retaining wall systems, and slope stability analyses. Additionally, further testing of obtained samples of soil or rock can be catered to mimic in-situ conditions at the site to provide better analysis of the soil-structure interaction.

The most basic subsurface investigation can provide information for designers when performed by experienced geotechnical firms. Because of their experience local to areas where they perform their work, significant history and background of the soil and rock types has been obtained through the years.

The types of information and recommendations which can be presented are as follows:

Allowable bearing pressures – used to design foundation sizes utilizing an allowable load transfer to the soil or rock at the bearing elevation.
Feasibility of reusing cut material as fill and to what standard it should be compacted in a controlled fill scenario.
Moisture conditions to be considered before, during, and after construction which can be useful in deciding long-term maintenance needs.
Evaluation of an existing soil surface for stability characteristics prior to placement of fill material. This is especially important in deep fill scenarios.
Anticipated depths at which rock will be encountered – which we know can be a costly endeavor if unforeseen.

Finally, it should also be noted that borings only provide information relative to where they are drilled. Significant changes in strata borings are always a distinct possibility as the nature of soil and rock in some areas can change drastically. However, information gained coupled with a geotechnical engineer’s experience can often mitigate these concerns substantially, or at least disclose the potential scenarios.