Company Announcement - If the building industry does not stop cutting corners to save costs, its already tarnished reputation could suffer further damage, cautions Hennie Bester, MD of Gauteng Piling. Bester, immediate past president of Master Builders Association North, says the piling industry, for one, has become a victim of this ‘penny wise-pound foolish’ attitude as it encounters growing apathy and ignorance regarding the need for proper geotechnical investigations to ensure durable – and cost-effective - foundations. A member of MBA North, Gauteng Piling has in the past 18 years provided the piling for the construction of hundreds of houses as well as major commercial and industrial structures, including 500 piles it recently installed – following geotechnical soil tests - for the construction of the massive Mall of Africa in Midrand. Bester says structural engineers should base the design of a building, including its foundations, on detailed geotechnical investigations. These tests - conducted by geotechnical engineers or engineering geologists - provide invaluable input regarding the physical properties of soil and rock on a site, and determines whether a structure will need normal, piled, or raft foundations.

“However, because of the current economic crunch in the building industry, clients far too frequently regard geotechnical soil tests as a luxury – a factor that can either be watered down, or totally eliminated, to save costs. This attitude almost inevitably leads to increased costs later when it is discovered that suitable material is not present to secure the founding. Then the client faces a total re-design - and substantially increased cost,” he explains. “It has been shown over and over that if clients are not prepared to spend money upfront for geotechnical investigations to decide how a structure will be founded, further down the line they will face heavy compensation for not having done the preliminary investigation. The problem is that contractors, struggling to find and retain clients in the current slump, are reluctant to offend developers or property owners by insisting on initial soil investigations to determine the correct foundations. “For the piling operator, such reticence makes quotations a hit-and-miss affair. We are expected to guess how deep each of what could be a hundred or more piles have to be. In the private sector, particularly, there is shocking ignorance about the need for soil investigations. Recently, a client suggested that a rod could simply be hammered into the ground to avoid paying for proper geotechnical tests.”

Bester believes that structural engineers should also carry the blame for not insisting on investigations to test soil conditions before foundations are provided. “Structural engineers vitally need soil investigations to arrive at cost-saving designs for any structure, be it a new house or a major shopping centre. On a R200 million project, sufficient geotechnical investigations could cost just R200 000. That’s surely a small price to pay if you consider what the cost - and other more serious - consequences could be if durable foundations are not provided,” he adds.