Yes, you read it correctly. Before we dig into this, lets catch up those unfamiliar with AC357. It is the acceptance criteria for helical piles in ICC. Any reports that ICC puts out for a helical pile product by a manufacturer must meet the testing and other requirements identified in AC358.
I doubt that many people will ever know that I was the driving force behind this national turnabout in this foundation industry change, but that’s okay.
I have written about this extensively in previous blogs. The first was here on this blog to bring to light, that the current ICC acceptance criteria and subsequent reports we focused on commercial work to the detriment of misunderstanding and ignoring the reality of residential retrofits. https://www.foundationaz.com/blog/icc-regulation
The second blog I laid out all the practical reason why borings on residential retrofit jobs were a waste of money with little to no benefit for the homeowner. https://www.foundationaz.com/blog/foundation-repair-contractors-need-oversight and https://www.foundationaz.com/blog/are-foundation-repair-contractors-regulated. I sent a letter to Helical Pile World with these same arguments and was complimented for a convincing well-articulated argument.
This all started about 5 years ago when I met with Michael Abegg, the current City of Phoenix city, current Building Official. I wanted to do the right thing and bring this to discrepancy to light and find a solution. As I pointed out these points to him, he replied “Bob these are really smart people at the ICC…. And what are you? You don’t even have a degree in engineering!” Engineers tend to completely ignore degrees in Architecture by the way.
That started a 5 year process of trying to think globally and act locally. Michael suggested I assemble an ad hoc group of local engineers and contractors to arrive at a consensus and make recommendations…. Which we did and presented to MAG (the Maricopa Associations of Governments)… twice. Each time defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory with ever increasing movement of the goal posts. Once we were told that all we needed to do was revise a simple drawing and some minor wording…. Which we did. Afterwards we were met with unanimous approval… all except the city of Phoenix, who now insisted that the ad hoc group was not good enough and that we needed an association recommendation. A unanimous vote was not required… but the MAG chairman did not want to pass a resolution with the City of Phoenix in opposition.
I was told repeatedly that all of my arguments made perfect sense…. But they needed a consensus of smart people to agree with me. Just in case… for liability reasons… you know … in case the city approved the permit and there was a catastrophic failure and the city got sued. This despite that one of the requirements in our proposal required a licensed engineer to make a determination that the structure was not in any danger of being structurally deficient. I think that relieves the city of any liability. That and the fact that I know of no catastrophic collapses of any residential homes from this in the City of Phoenix boundaries…. So no precedence for this extreme conservatism.
All total I have probably had 20 meetings with the City of Phoenix to explain the basics of them to them over and over. Many local engineers, such as Gregg Creaser of Speedie, Paul Scott of CTS, Tony Polusny of Pangolin, Randy Marwig of Western Tech, David Deatherage of Copper State Engineering, and many others including Ivory Bates of Arizona Helical Piers Inc, tirelessly showed up with me and devoted their time to helping the various jurisdictions understand what was really in the public’s best interests. But after all that we were given the additional requirement that an official association needed to give their recommendation.
Well that started another chapter. I went to the code committee for the local structural engineers to get their recommendation, where I was met with some support (Paul Scott in particular), but mostly hostility of a “non-engineer” trying to drive engineering recommendations. Driving this was some engineers in Tucson who had personal agenda against me saying that I was simply doing this to line my pockets personally, and that my character and motives were suspect. (this despite a 3 time finalist for the BBB Torch award for ethics). That and the fact that I was not as competent as engineers and that I needed to learn my place. I believe the wording was “ learn to follow the recommendations of the experts” (even though most engineers at this meeting could not technically disagree with me) Although the board voted unanimously that my proposal was the right thing to do, they could not muster enough votes to support me with a letter acknowledging that fact.
I then went to the local Geotechnical Engineering group to see If I could get something passed. I was initially told that their organization does not do that kind of thing. After many years new people came to office an I was told that they could do a GI sponsored white paper. After years of prodding and asking it never happened. Although I was never told no. Despite almost all them agreeing with me on the premise of my proposal.
At the same time I found out that IAPMO (the competing organization to ICC) built criteria for a helical manufacturer of helical piles for residential applications without borings! https://www.foundationaz.com/blog/international-building-code-vs-international-residential-code. I dug in and discovered that it was a limited application built exclusively for that manufacturer. I lobbied our supplier, Supportworks, to do the same. After many meetings, letters, emails and phone calls they agreed. I reported on this in my blog. https://www.foundationaz.com/blog/foundation-supportworks-receives-iapmo-approval-for-288-push-pile and https://www.foundationaz.com/blog/supportworks-receives-ues-evaluation-report-691
I have now been pressing to get this adopted locally, with continuing push back.
Apparently the other manufactures of helical piles caught wind of this. Not wanting Supportworks to be the only one with this capability they lobbied ICC to match it. ICC not wanting to be at a disadvantage with their competitor caved in and built Appendix A to effectively say the same thing. I guess politics really does govern there.
You can verify this here. https://helicalpileworld.com/ac358_revisions_helical_piles_approved_high_seismic_zones.html (look to the bottom of the article to the last paragraph to see it in passing).
So after 5 years of trying to do the right thing for the community and being told so many times that I should sit back and let the really smart people handle this, I have finally been vindicated. I doubt that many people will ever know that I was the driving force behind this national turnabout, but that’s okay. The change is in the best interests of our Customers & the foundation repair industry.
