Report Loss Prevention

Loss Prevention Working Group Report

22nd Jan 2015 - by Ciaran Jennings

Hugh Mallett, Chairman LPWG writes:

The group is drafting articles and guidance on a number of issues that are important to AGS members, see below for the list of our ongoing work programme and soon to be available guidance.

General

The LPWG met once since the November Committee meeting – 22nd Jan 2015. No calls have been made to the Legal or Chemical Helplines since the last LPWG meeting.

A Griffiths & Armour publication on claims “Professional Indemnity Insurance: Lessons to be learnt” is to be made available to AGS members via the new website

LPWG generally agrees with putting some documents behind a paywall on the new AGS website. There is also support for a knowledge hub (e-learning) that could be considered as a future initiative for students.

Loss Prevention Alerts (LPAs) are still in high demand for downloading [20 LPAs downloaded >100 times between Oct and Jan].

New member has joined the group, Nora Fung – Arup legal.

Recently Published

Newsletter

Elvanite Vs Amec- Limitations of Liability
BGS – Deposition of Data

LPAs

LPA 58 – Risks associated with as built drawings.
LPA 59 – The Consequences of Damage to Underground Services LPA 60 – What is meant by Supervision?

Work in Progress

LPAs
Summaries for the web site being reviewed and edited for accuracy.
Permission is being sought for publication of LPA 09 [Mott MacDonald case] online.
Contractors seeking contractual indemnities from their Sub Contractors. Ready for publication

Net Contribution Clauses: Newsletter article prepared. Authorisation to publish being sought from Griffiths & Armour.

Document on Ground Investigation Reporting (GIR/ GDR): Initial redraft prepared by J Strange – subject to further review/ comment. Now held to be consistent with revised BS5930.

Asbestos & deleterious materials: Newsletter article to be prepared [may also pick up discussion at Members Day]. Article on insurance cover re asbestos last published in 2011 to be re-published.

Collateral Warranties: Griffiths & Armour being approached to allow their Collateral Warranties – Basic Guide to be made available to AGS members. If permission is granted a short article highlighting its availability to be prepared for the Newsletter.

Expert Advisor and Expert Witness: Newsletter article being prepared. 1 of 2

Copyright Paper on copyright issues: drafted [advice to Members on copyright and on issues arising from use of reports and drawings in planning process].

PI Insurance for Contaminated Land: NEC3 contract requires insurance terms to be on an each and every claim basis. Aggregate cover only available for contaminated land (and asbestos and radioactivity). A newsletter article is being drafted.

Guide to report writing: Newsletter article drafted to advertise the guidance to AGS Members. The Guide itself was up-dated, but never published. Up-dated version to be retrieved, put on the web site and publicised in Newsletter.

Limitation period and defects liability: Article being drafted

Confidentiality and Intellectual Property Rights: issues for Staff on Secondment Loss Prevention Guidance drafted to address some of the issues arising from secondment of staff.

Signing contracts under duress: Newsletter article being prepared.

Client Guide: What Institutions, Trade Associations or other organisations might a Client expect a Geotechnical/Geoenvironmental Company and their employees to belong to? Paper in preparation.

Piling Damage to Live Railway Tunnel. Paper in preparation.

Article Data Management Laboratories

FPS Electronic Pile Schedule

28th Nov 2008 - by Ann-Marie Casserly

Tags: data electronically piling

The long nights of re-typing pile schedules could be a thing of the past as the Federation of Piling Specialists launches a standardised form of pile schedule for use by Contractors and Engineers alike in the driven and bored piling market. For too long now the procurement of piling has involved the laborious inputting of piling data by engineers into schedules with a wide variety of formats. This has usually been followed by the re-typing of the same data by each of the piling tenderers, incorporating of course a few human errors along the way. This same data has then been tweaked and adjusted each time the designer has issued new information. At contract stage, it has often then fallen to the Engineer to rigorously check the successful tenderer’s piling schedule against his own design details.

This is obviously a very inefficient way of working and with increasingly tight tender periods this wasted time could be better spent on honing the design solution and improving the quality of the end product. Furthermore it is sometimes the case that unnecessary human errors remain unspotted and deficient piles are as a result incorporated into the permanent works. Differing formats of information, particularly pile loading has lead to misunderstandings on numerous occasions between Engineer and Piling Contractor.

It is against this background that the FPS has developed a standardised pile schedule in Excel format which it is hoped will be used by the Engineer as a simple way of conveying pile design information such as pile diameter, cut-off level, applied loadings etc to the Piling Contractor. The key features of the pile schedule are as follows:

Uses a standardised terminology showing all of the information required to permit construction schedules to be prepared. Colour coding denotes responsibility for completing data cells.
Allows new revisions to be prepared either from scratch or by copying previous revisions.
Allows each revision to be saved with a unique file reference.
Scheduling to be emailed in a standard format to reduce potential delays in retyping pile schedules.
Allows basic or advanced loadings to be specified.

With the information provided electronically the Piling Contractor can supply the Client, his designer and follow on contractors with as-built information in a standard format which can be used easily by all parties and which will act as a key document in the Piling Completion Report. Furthermore the pile schedule is designed to be easily compatible with new data handling systems such as DIGGS.

Obviously the success of the new pile schedule, which can be downloaded for free without prior registration from the FPS website, will be reliant on the numbers of practitioners who use it regularly. Therefore the FPS is very keen to receive feedback from users so that any improvements which may be necessary can be implemented as early as possible. Please contact the Federation of Piling Specialists at fps@fps.org.uk.

Article Data Management

Specification for Piling and Embedded Retaining Walls Errata

28th Dec 2007 - by Ann-Marie Casserly

Tags: Embedded errors piling

There are errors in transcription in the first two print runs of ICE’s second edition of the Specification for Piling and Embedded Retaining Walls. These are shown in Italic as below

In Table B1.4 Standard installation tolerances (page 33)

Tolerance	All bearing piles	All embedded retaining wall types constructed without a guide wall	All embedded retaining wall types constructed with a guide wall
Plan position for piles/walls with cut-off level above or at commencing surface	75mm in any direction	75 mm	25mm
Plan position for piles/walls with cut-off level below commencing surface	75mm in any direction plus additional tolerance in accordance with rake and vertical deviation below	75mm + 13.3mm for every 1m below cut-off level	*25mm* + 13.3mm for every 1m below cut-off level
Maximum permitted deviation of the finished pile/wall element from the vertical at any level	1 in 75 at any level	1 in 75 for exposed face	1 in 75 for exposed face
Maximum permitted deviation of raked piles	Rake <1 in 6; 1 in 25 Rake >1 in 6; 1 in 15	n/a	n/a

In B1.14.1 Driving procedures and redrive checks (page 41) Line 10 “blows/25mm” should be “blows/250mm”

In B1.14.3 Set (page 42) Last line “penetration of 250mm” should be “penetration of 25mm”

Purchasers will have different updates on these errors dependent upon their purchase timing. It is intended that this note alerts all purchasers to the problem errors and that it can be referred to when clarification is needed for Specification discussions.