PCA Contracting, representing Australasia, was selected as the winner of the Second World Cup of Micropiles by the delegates of the 13th International Workshop on Micropiles. The workshop, hosted by the International Society for Micropiles (ISM), Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) and the International Association of Foundation Drilling (ADSC), was held in Vancouver, BC, Canada, March 29 to April 1, 2017.
PCA was selected for its project, Life Extension of 132kV Lattice Tower Foundations in Townsville, Australia. The company was commissioned by Powerlink Queensland to carry out a foundation life extension project of 26 towers with “grillage” foundations, a framework of timber or steel for support in marshy or treacherous soil. PCA installed piles and brackets under live conditions with no power outages. There was no soil information available, so the pile lengths were established through empirical means using feedback from the drilling process with static load tests to confirm assumptions. PCA installed 40mm hollow bars to a tolerance of +/- 5mm from plan position. In the end the project was completed two weeks ahead of schedule with a spotless safety record and for 25% of the cost of using concrete foundations.
Competitors included Crux Subsurface, Blue Lake Hydroelectric Expansion project, from North America; IB-Brandner, 10-Person Gondola Dorfbahn Middle Station – Gerlos/Tyrol project, from Europe; and University of Los Andes, Colombia, Alluvial Anker Micropiles as Alternative Foundation in Tropical Soils, from South and Central America.
