DFI 49th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations Featured

A review and overview on the Deep Foundations Institute's 49th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations in Aurora, Colorado.

After months of scrawling down ideas and then refining them into plans, it’s always exciting to see the results. The Deep Foundations Institute’s 49th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations took place the week of October 7, 2024. Armed with an energetic road trip playlist and a Jeep full of banners and building blocks, my co-worker Rachel and I hit the road on Sunday afternoon: Colorado or bust. I was ready to let the world know that helical piles are PROVEN, VERSATILE, and FUN!

Helical Piles are Proven

This one is so important that we put it up in big letters in our booth – PROVEN. Since the 1950s, engineers at the A.B. Chance Company, home of the modern earth anchor, have been promoting the correlation between installation torque and ultimate capacity. So many great minds have contributed to the research of the torque correlation (K_t), and guess what – if they are still working, they were at this conference. It’s a great venue to get to interact with some of the most brilliant engineering minds of today!

If you design a foundation with helical piles, you should have confidence that they will perform as promised. However, your confidence may be limited by the product being installed. That’s why we use mill-certified U.S. steel welded by employees qualified to meet American Welding Society (AWS) standards (D1.1). We put the performance data for Chance helical piles into our Technical Design Manual and HeliCAP software to ensure engineers have all the tools they need to create proven designs.

Helical Piles are Versatile

One of the most often-asked questions I got at the DFI conference this year was “What applications are helical piles used for?” This is simultaneously an easy and not-so-easy question to answer. Easy because there are so many applications and difficult because I was always afraid I would leave something out!

Here are some applications for helical piles that the engineers at the DFI Conference talked about:

• Residential and Commercial Foundation Repair and New Construction
• Decks, Boardwalks and Docks
• Marine and Mooring
• Tiebacks for retaining walls, temporary shoring, seawalls
• Oil and gas pipelines, pipe racks
• Battery energy storage systems
• Light poles, EV chargers, renewable energy systems

At every conference, I learn more about how engineers are specifying helical piles as the solution for many of their foundation challenges. I was also thankful to hear praise for our local distributor partners across North America and Europe who offer industry-best support from design to installation.

Helical Piles are Fun

I’m not an engineer but I have benefited from our team and all that they have taught me over the past several years. I find myself trying to explain helical piles in such a way that it will be enlightening to someone who is new to the industry and yet still fun for someone who may have literally written the book on torque correlation.

A lifelong lover of Lego® bricks, this seemed to me a natural way to combine fun and education. I decided to create a raised Lego display so visitors to our booth could see what’s going on “below the surface.” Working with an ambitious engineering intern, we created 3D printed helical piles with Lego toppers to showcase how buildings, streetlights, and EV chargers could all be supported by helical piles. Creative visitors to our booth also applied the technology to their own creations, including offshore drilling equipment, a historic preservation castle project, and a giant duck. (There are Chance helical piles under a bronze mammoth in Dallas so why not!)

Secondly, we had some fun with remote-controlled versions of popular helical pile installation equipment, including a mini skid steer loader and an excavator. One benefit of helical piles is the ability to maneuver the equipment for installation in limited access spaces. Another is their quick installation time. Loaded with 3D-printed torque motors and Chance helical pile installation tooling, attendees raced through our obstacle course. Our fastest drivers for each day were:

• Tuesday – Brian with EBS Geostructural (23 seconds)
• Wednesday – Carter with Gonzaga University (16 seconds)
• Thursday – Olivia with Power Engineers (20 seconds)

Thanks to all who came to the Chance booth to prove that deep foundations can be fun!

A special thanks to everyone at DFI who worked so hard to put together such a great opportunity for our industry to come together! I know how much work it was to be responsible for just a 10x30 footprint in the exhibit hall – I can’t even imagine the logistical marathon that they undertook! If you ever get the opportunity to attend a conference sponsored by the Deep Foundations Institute, I can assure you, it is well worth your time.