This $1.05 billion complex will consist of over 5,400,000 square feet of retail, office, condo, and hotel space when completed. Foundations included 24-inch and 36-inch diameter high capacity auger cast piles used innovatively. The auger cast piles were installed in tight groups, known as tangent piles, to form a large bearing element with substantial resistance. When the question of how to load test arisen, this type of foundation element came up, STATNAMIC™ load testing was the only practical answer.

AFT managed and implemented the foundation load test program consisting of seven axial STATNAMIC™ load tests up to 5,000 tons. For the low-rise structures on the project, AFT conducted static load testing, both in compression and tension on conventional auger cast piles.

An extensive instrumentation program was undertaken to understand tangent pile bearing element performance. This effort included strain instrumenting each pile in the tangent clusters. Up to 150 instruments were installed and monitored for a single load test. The complexity of the test program required highly sophisticated data acquisition and analysis, just the sort of job AFT is known for!