Helical Piles at Berklee College of Music

Helical Piles for Renovation

Berklee College of Music was renovating two existing buildings to make safety upgrades, including the installation of a new elevator. The project involved constructing several new foundations inside the buildings. Deep foundation support was required because this area of Boston was filled-in and the soils conditions were generally unfavorable for conventional spread footings.

Helical Piles: Engineered Foundation Technologies (EFT) installed a total of 40 ECP helical piles to support the new loads. The pilings advanced through the poor fill soils and anchored into the Boston Clue Clay below. Pile lengths varied from about 18 feet deep to 28 feet deep.

EFT built a load frame and conducted a pile load test on a helical pier. This testing was done to confirm the performance of the helical pier system. The Berklee College of Music project was successfully completed in 10 working days.