Hayward Baker announced that James Dickinson joined the company as the southern states shoring division manager in its Atlanta office. Dickinson is a graduate of the Uni- versity of Liverpool, with an M.S. in civil and struc- tural engineering. He has over 15 years of exper- ience in the geotechnical construction industry. In addition, Michael Morello was promoted to opera- tions manager and James Weldon, P.E., joined the company as a project manager in the southern states Ground Improve- ment Division. Morello is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in civil engineering. He has over 10 years of experience with Hayward Baker, specializing in ground improvement engineering and construc- tion. Weldon comes to Hayward Baker with five years of experience with a California- based shoring company. He is a graduate of California State University in Fullerton with a B.S. in civil engineering. Weldon will manage geotechnical construction projects in the southern states. A team from the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Associ- ation, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and with partial support from the Applied Technology Council (ATC), mobilized to investigate the potential impacts of the widespread earthquake- induced geotechnical and subsurface infrastructure failures as a result of the April 16, 2016, M7.8 earthquake offshore of the west coast of northern Ecuador. The event and its aftershocks have led to several hundred casualties, tens of thousands of homeles s people and s igni f icant destruction. Based on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the main earthquake was caused by shallow thrust faulting on or near the plate boundary between the Nazca and South America plates where the Nazca subducts beneath the South America plate at a rate of 61 mm/yr. The U.S.-Ecuador GEER team is led by Dr. Sissy Nikolaou of WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff and Dr. Xavier Vera-Grunauer of the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil and Geoestudios consulting firm. The NSF-funded U.S. GEER team members include Professor Kyle Rollins of Brigham Young University, Professor Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos of the University of Michigan, Professor Clint Wood of the University of Arkansas, Daniel Alzamora of the Federal Highway Administration and Gabriela Martinez Lyvers of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. The team also includes structural engineers Ramon Gilsanz and Virginia Diaz of Gilsanz Murray Steficek, who are funded by ATC. The team is also working with other self-funded engineers who have traveled to Ecuador, including Professor Eduardo Miranda of Stanford University, Enrique Abel Morales of the University at Buffalo and Roberto Luque of UC Berkeley. U.S. GEER members are interacting with top Ecuadorian govern- ment officials through their collaboration with leading Ecuadorian earthquake professionals. Liebherr Rig Used for Factory Foundation The LB 44, the largest pure rotary drilling rig from Liebherr, is being used by Hilti & Jehle to insert pile foundations for a new factory building in Dornbirn, Austria. The building measures 203 m x 130 m (666 ft x 427 ft) and is for Julius Blum, a company specializing in the manufacture of functional furniture fittings. Over 2,988 piles are being inserted at depths of 28 m (92 ft) and 29 m (95 ft) for the foundation work, which started in the middle of March 2016. The ground conditions present a special challenge. Although the soil comprises mainly loam and peat, the installation is made more 110 • DEEP FOUNDATIONS • MAY/JUNE 2016 difficult by several layers of densely- compacted gravel up to 6 m (20 ft) thick. Due to the difficult soil conditions, and in order to avoid subsidence, a large number of concrete piles in various forms were utilized at the Dornbirn site. In the past, various types of machinery would have been necessary, but this new mult- ifunctional machine can create different types of piles, depending on the require- ments and soil conditions. Also in operation at the site is the new high-performance piling and drilling rig LRB 355. The 105 tonne (116 ton) machine with a maximum height of 33.5 m (110 ft) made its debut at the end of 2015.
