Location
Chicago, Illinois
Date
01 May 2013, 2:05 pm - 2:20 pm
Abstract
In 2007, the King of Saudi Arabia launched a large scale development program for the construction of a complete university campus on an existing lagoon. The fast-track project was to be completed within a period of 24 months leaving no time for the usual preliminary investigation and design phase. The 5,600,000 m2 site was selected north of Jeddah and a proper soil inves-tigation could not be completed ahead of the start of construction due to difficult site access and challenging existing soft soil condition. In addition to that, because the structural design or even the master plan had not been finalized, the design of the foundation system (loads, footing location...) was going to be completed concurrent with the construction itself. A new con-cept of foundation support, based on ground improvement, adapted to all potential ground conditions and allowing structures to be randomly located had to be designed and built in record time. The further challenge was to establish the soil parameters and improvement methods. To fit into the extremely tight schedule of the job, the observational method ended up being the best way to define reliable and tested parameters for the ground improvement design and selection to adapt to constantly changing conditions. Late changes in the type of structures combined with difficult site working conditions presented the team with challenges that lead to an innovative use of an optimized combination of Dynamic Compaction, Dynamic Replacement, High Energy Dynamic Replacement and Dynamic Surcharging to meet both the schedule deadlines and the improvement cri-teria.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
7th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2013 Missouri University of Science and Technology, 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
Varaksin, Serge and Massé, Frédéric, "Observational Method for the Design of a New Ground Improvement Concept Adapted to a Large-Scale Fast-Track Project" (2013). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 3.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/7icchge/session17/3
Observational Method for the Design of a New Ground Improvement Concept Adapted to a Large-Scale Fast-Track Project
Chicago, Illinois
In 2007, the King of Saudi Arabia launched a large scale development program for the construction of a complete university campus on an existing lagoon. The fast-track project was to be completed within a period of 24 months leaving no time for the usual preliminary investigation and design phase. The 5,600,000 m2 site was selected north of Jeddah and a proper soil inves-tigation could not be completed ahead of the start of construction due to difficult site access and challenging existing soft soil condition. In addition to that, because the structural design or even the master plan had not been finalized, the design of the foundation system (loads, footing location...) was going to be completed concurrent with the construction itself. A new con-cept of foundation support, based on ground improvement, adapted to all potential ground conditions and allowing structures to be randomly located had to be designed and built in record time. The further challenge was to establish the soil parameters and improvement methods. To fit into the extremely tight schedule of the job, the observational method ended up being the best way to define reliable and tested parameters for the ground improvement design and selection to adapt to constantly changing conditions. Late changes in the type of structures combined with difficult site working conditions presented the team with challenges that lead to an innovative use of an optimized combination of Dynamic Compaction, Dynamic Replacement, High Energy Dynamic Replacement and Dynamic Surcharging to meet both the schedule deadlines and the improvement cri-teria.
