AUGER CAST PILES - Texas A&M | LG Barcus and Sons

AUGER CAST PILES - TEXAS A&M GALVESTON

CENTRAL UTILITY PLANT

Texas A&M is building a new central utility plant that is located on Pelican Island, just north of Galveston, Texas. It is our seventh project on the island, our sixth Texas A&M University project, and our fourth project working with Vaughn Construction on the Texas A&M campus installing Auger Piles.
Learn more about Barcus Auger Piles on our DEEP FOUNDATIONS PAGE.

GENERAL CONTRACTOR:  Vaughn Construction
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER:  Gessner Engineering
OWNER:  Texas A&M University

MOBILIZATION of DRILL RIG

This project was unique in the fact that we were unable to deliver our drill rig directly to the site via normal trucking. The island only has one drawbridge for access to the island. That bridge has a low weight limit capacity preventing us from trucking our crane across the bridge onto the island. To mobilize the drill rig to the work site, we had to hire a third-party barging company to assist us with getting our crane to the island. We delivered our crane to the Port of Galveston, and they lifted our crane onto their barge to ship across to the barge company’s yard on the island.

safety and quality control

We worked a total of 1,166 manhours on this project completing our scope of work without any incidents on the project. The owner-provided testing lab and inspections were done by Tolunay-Wong Engineers. Our crew worked in tandem with Tolunay-Wong’s field inspector to monitor the pile installation and grout testing. All piles were transferred without any deficiencies.

pile load test

We installed one pile load test to a depth of 83ft. with telltales installed at a depth of 80ft and 68ft. We tested the pile to 90 tons and with telltale’s being installed, and showing hardly any movement at those depths, the production piles were able to be shortened to around 70 ft.

PILE INSTALLATION

Once we received the approval to start installing the piles for the foundation, our crew began installing a total of 289-18 inch diameter piles with a total of 19,848LF in just over a month. Our scope consisted of drilling and grouting the piles, spoil removal to a stockpile location, and placing the pile reinforcing steel into the piles. Our crews worked closely with Vaughn Construction crews as they were able to bring us pile reinforcing steel and keep the stockpile of spoils removed to keep us going.
Learn more about Barcus Auger Cast Piles on our DEEP FOUNDATIONS PAGE.