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.