The Piling & Foundation Specialists Federation (PFSF) jointly with Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS) ran two webinars in November/December 2022. The webinars were conducted by Stephen Buttling. Links to Webinar slides and additional material are below.

Stephen Buttling has nearly 50 years of experience in the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore,Thailand and Australia, and has been involved with Working Platforms since 2009, when he was with Piling Contractors and chaired a PFSF Technical Committee working on the topic. Stephen has assisted a number of piling contractors with the use of the FPS Rig Track Bearing Pressure Tool. He has also recently been asked to join the EFFC committee looking into Working Platforms. Stephen’s company, NGC, is an Associate member of the PFSF.

Associate members link https://pilingfederation.org.au/members/associate-members/

Webinar 1 – Rig Bearing Pressures

This webinar concentrates on the determination of tracked rig bearing pressures for use in working platform design. It is based on the very recent version 3 of the FPS (UK) spreadsheet FPS-Rig-Track-Pressure-Calculation-Tool. This has been revised as the result of some work which Stephen was doing in connection with an F2800 CFA rig for PFSF member Hully Foundations. It highlighted that there was an error in the previous version in connection with the effect of crowd force on track pressure. Click on link PFSF-AGS Webinar 1 – Rig Bearing Pressures- PDF Slides & Additional Material

Webinar 2 – Working Platform Design

This webinar covers how the FPS spreadsheet data is then used in the BR470 method to produce a working platform design.

The fundamentals of the method are discussed, including how it was derived and more recent work including that by the UK Temporary Works Forum, and the T-Value method, is also included. Special attention is paid to questions of “conservatism”, and some mention is made of geogrid reinforced platforms. Click on Link PFSF-AGS Webinar 2- Working Platform Design-Slides & Additional Material