Municipalities and other clients increasingly demand that pile suppliers demonstrate with test loads that the piles installed are sufficient for the project in question. Rob van Dorp, geotechnical consultant and managing partner of Allnamics Pile Testing Experts, advises clients and contractors to do this in advance for a complete offer so that the costs are already included in the price. He also suggests providing a class A2 or C test for larger projects as a standard.
Recently appeared in Bouwaktua, the magazine for the construction industry, an article about the role of pile tests in optimizing foundation designs. A standard design has hidden safety. By activating it, the foundation design can be more efficient without compromising safety and reliability. The building standards make it possible to reward the effort (and investments) made to get to know the subsoil of a construction project better (through extra soil research or by carrying out pile tests) with a higher load-bearing capacity.
View the entire article in Dutch on page 9 <here>
