Alternative Title
Paper No. 8.02
Location
St. Louis, Missouri
Date
11 Mar 1998, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Abstract
The project consists of a middle school constructed on a previously undeveloped site. Site development required leveling a mountain ridge and perimeter tills up to 150 feet deep to create the relatively level 15 acre building site. Access to the site required a 1000 foot long side hill road from the adjacent main highway. Neither the owner nor the design team obtained geotechnical investigations of the site. As a result, they failed to consider the impact of the geologic setting on seepage, ground water flow, and slope stability. Near the end of construction, slope instabilities occurred in a cut section of the entrance road and one of the major embankment sections. The owner, the county school board, hired the writer to determine the cause of the instabilities and provide testimony in their ongoing litigation. This paper summarizes the site conditions and project history, describes the writer's investigation, describes the dispute resolution processes, and presents two procedural lessons learned from the case: the importance of qualified professional geotechnical advice, and the inherent and sometimes unrecognized value of ADR procedures.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
4th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1998 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Cheeks, J. Richard, "It's Not What You Pay; It's What It Costs You. A Geotechnical Engineering Case Study" (1998). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 4.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/4icchge/4icchge-session08/4
It's Not What You Pay; It's What It Costs You. A Geotechnical Engineering Case Study
St. Louis, Missouri
The project consists of a middle school constructed on a previously undeveloped site. Site development required leveling a mountain ridge and perimeter tills up to 150 feet deep to create the relatively level 15 acre building site. Access to the site required a 1000 foot long side hill road from the adjacent main highway. Neither the owner nor the design team obtained geotechnical investigations of the site. As a result, they failed to consider the impact of the geologic setting on seepage, ground water flow, and slope stability. Near the end of construction, slope instabilities occurred in a cut section of the entrance road and one of the major embankment sections. The owner, the county school board, hired the writer to determine the cause of the instabilities and provide testimony in their ongoing litigation. This paper summarizes the site conditions and project history, describes the writer's investigation, describes the dispute resolution processes, and presents two procedural lessons learned from the case: the importance of qualified professional geotechnical advice, and the inherent and sometimes unrecognized value of ADR procedures.
