Proper Oversight in Regulating Municipalities in Arizona: Balancing Risks and Ensuring Public Safety

The primary duty of governing municipalities is to protect the public through reasonable supervision while balancing risks and expenses. However, it is vital to assess the current oversight methods to ensure that projects are accurately diagnosed and recommendations are based on evidence.

Presently, there is a prerequisite for a soil report to be conducted on projects involving helical or push piles. The soil report includes soil drillings for helical piles. However, it is worth considering the acknowledgment by organizations like IAPMO that foundation repair adheres to a prescriptive nature, which provides an appropriate compensating factor of safety without the need for soil drillings. There are several reasons why supporting this endeavor is important:

• Limited usefulness of soil drilling rigs
• Independence of pile design from soil conditions
• Accounting for unknown conditions
• Addressing concerns about hard lenses
• Safety factors and grade beam span
• Special conditions and judgment of local conditions
• Differentiating serviceability issues from structural failure
• Alternative means of capacity verification
• Practical and ethical considerations
• Mitigating the bypassing of permits

1. Limited usefulness of soil drilling rigs: On developed residential lots, the location of soil drilling rigs often does not provide access close enough to yield valuable results. In many cases, the work is carried out in the backyard, while the drilling might only be feasible near the street where utility easements and associated risks are more prevalent. Consequently, the variability produced in such cases is greater than the variability in pile information.

2. Independence of pile design from soil conditions: In residential structures with light loads, pile design is primarily influenced by loads and footing spans, rather than soil types or conditions. Therefore, soil conditions have minimal impact on pile design for lightly loaded residential structures.

3. Accounting for unknown conditions: Unknown conditions like cobbles or other factors can be accommodated through pre-drill clauses to ensure the minimum required bearing depth is reached.

4. Addressing concerns about hard lenses: The concern that piles could lock up in a hard lens directly over a soft one is not significantly different from the potential occurrence in drill borings. This concern can be mitigated through appropriate design and installation practices.

5. Safety factors and grade beam span: Residential pile systems typically incorporate safety factors in the 6-10 times range. The spacing of the piles is primarily governed by the span of the grade beam. Therefore, the concern of potential failures due to hard lenses is considerably reduced.

6. Special conditions and judgment of local conditions: Special conditions such as karst or mining tunnels can be adequately addressed by the Engineer of Record (EOR) who possesses the expertise to assess local conditions and determine if additional exploration is required.

7. Differentiating serviceability issues from structural failure: The EOR can distinguish between serviceability issues and structural failure. If the original design load path is still functioning, it can act as a redundant load path even if the pile system fails. In such cases, serviceability problems may reemerge, but structural failure can be avoided.

8. Alternative means of capacity verification: Capacity verification can be achieved with a high degree of accuracy by implementing special inspections that assess installation torque or pressures, utilizing conservative code factors. This provides an effective means of verifying pile capacity.

9. Practical and ethical considerations: It is neither good practice nor ethical to require soil borings on paper when it is widely disregarded in residential retrofits. This disconnect between requirements on paper and actual practices exposes installers to risks for non-compliance.

10. Mitigating the bypassing of permits: Due to the excessive and seemingly unnecessary paper requirements, many homeowners and installers are opting to bypass the permit process altogether, leading to limited oversight. This is detrimental to the industry as a whole and compromises safety.

Public Safety: Reevaluating Oversight for Enhanced Protection

It is imperative for code officials to recognize oversight actions that genuinely benefit the public and align with practical and effective measures. By reevaluating and adjusting existing oversight practices, municipalities can better serve the public while maintaining high standards in the industry.