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Geotechnical News • June 2016
GEO-INTEREST
site —for a preload, and misled the
plaintiff into following that course.
The plaintiff says the references to
the investigation as “preliminary”
contained in the healing and opening
sentence of the report, are not suf-
ficient to constitute a warning that
recommendations are not to be used
for construction purposes.
The report was put into final form and
approved by Mr. Smith. It was picked
up soon afterwards by Mr. Doe. Mr.
Doe read the report, but he says he
regarded it as something intended for
the contractor rather than himself. So
he took it to the contractor’s office.
The contractor is a company which
has professional engineers on its staff.
It supplies and erects prefabricated
buildings, with ancillary engineering
services, including foundation design
and site inspection. It is quite appar-
ent that both Mr. Jones and Mr. Doe
intended the soils report to be used by
the contractor’s engineering personnel,
for whom it had been ordered. There
is no suggestion that anyone thought it
was intended for the guidance of lay-
men, such as Mr. Doe and his partner.
I have concluded that this report was
intended to be “preliminary” in the
sense that its purpose was to assist a
construction engineer in costing, and
deciding between, foundation alterna-
tives. It was not intended to be used
for actual foundation construction,
though the information concerning
the piled foundation was probably
adequate for that purpose.
The Design Phase
Sometime during the latter half of
June the plaintiff retained the Con-
tractor to supply and construct the
prefabricated building and to perform
engineering services required for the
project.
The Contractor was not to be a “gen-
eral contractor”, in the sense of having
total responsibility for the whole
work, and actual preparation of the
site and foundation construction were
specifically excluded from its contract.
But the matter for which it undertook
responsibility included, among others:
“Foundation design including letter of
supervision and site inspection” and
foundation design drawings, signed
and sealed by a registered Professional
Engineer. The plaintiff is said to have
been “its own general contractor”
in the sense that the plaintiff was to
arrange, at its own cost, for all work
required other than that undertaken by
the contractor, including site prepa-
ration work and construction of the
foundations. But as part of its lump-
sum contract the contractor under-
took to design the foundations and
to inspect the site prior to construc-
tion. The contractor was to provide a
supervising engineer for the project, in
addition to providing and erecting the
“pre-engineered” steel building.
The Contractor proceeded with
the preparation of drawings. These
contemplated in place of the all-piled
foundation which had originally
been planned, the less-expensive
mixed design — a concrete founda-
tion supported by piles for the walls
and concrete slab floor poured on
preloaded, unpiled ground inside.
Before completing these drawings, the
contractor’s chief engineer telephoned
Mr. Jones, the defendant’s technician,
to ask about preloading
The contractor’s engineer, Mr. Brown,
asked Mr. Jones how longthe preload
should be left in place. He says Mr.
Jones replied that it should remain
in place for eight weeks or until
settlement ceased. Mr. Jones says he
replied that he did not know how long
settlement would take, that he had
heard reports of eight weeks being a
sufficient time for settlement to take
place, but that the way to find out was
to use settlement gauges. Mr. Brown
told Mr. Jones he was going to make
some reference to preloading in the
drawings, but he did not indicate what
it was he intended to put on the plan.
I found Mr. Jones a credible witness
and his recollection of this conversa-
tion seemed somewhat better than that
of Mr. Brown.
This Chapter will be concluded in
the September issue of Geotechnical
News.
The Vancouver Geotechnical Society
and the
Canadian Geotechnical Society
69th Canadian GeoteChniCal ConferenCe
Topics and specialty sessions of local and national relevance to geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering
October 2 to 5, 2016 • Westin Bayshore Hotel • Vancouver British Columbia
