Helical Piles

Rapid population growth had Sharon Public School in East Gwillimbury bursting at the seams. The York Region District School Board found a location and began the process of designing a school to serve the community.

The site was ideally located, surrounded by the fast growing housing developments in the heart of the community it was going to serve. Time was front of mind for this project, but the site had some challenges in store.

Patriot Engineering, conducted a geotechnical investigation at the site. The subsurface conditions were found to be unsuitable for conventional spread footings due to high water table and soil n values hovering around 10. Patriot Engineering recommended helical piles as a foundation method with Compression load testing to confirm the design and on-site capacity of the helical piles.

Salas O’Brien, the structural engineer, worked closely with EBS Geostructural to develop an effective foundation plan.
A total of 739 Chance helical piles were chosen for the project. Three sizes of Chance Helical Piles were used, based on specific load-bearing requirements.

Before full-scale production began, load testing was conducted by EBS Geostructural & witnessed by Patriot Engineering, to ensure the selected helical piles would meet the necessary performance criteria. Testing Confirmed the piles and design, but revealed that the pile depth would be deeper than anticipated.

Working closely with Aquicon the General Contractor, EBS devised a plan to overcome the new threat to the schedule.
The modular nature of helical piles and a relatively small installation footprint meant EBS could update the material supply schedule and deploy 2 and 3 crews at a time to keep the project timeline intact, without impacting the other trades on-site.

The successful completion of the foundation on Chance Helical Piles is thanks to the collaboration and communication with our partners on this project.