The Use and Misuse of Testing Labs

By Joe Petraus, MS, PE

Joe Petraus is a partner with EDP Consultants of Kirtland, OH, and a member of XL Design Professional’s Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants Advisory Board (GECAB).

Introduction

First, a little background: Our firm, EDP Consultants, is a geotechnical and environmental consulting firm with a staff of just under 50. Our in-house staff does our own field exploration, and we place a great deal of emphasis on providing construction monitoring on our projects. Although many firms do not offer these services, we think this corporate structure best serves our clients and it seems to work for us.

During my 30 years in this profession, I’ve learned that our northern Ohio construction industry is not unique. In fact, the challenges we face in staffing, competition, fee bidding and in working with various types of clients are common throughout North America.

The Challenges

Despite an abundance of projects available, competitive pressures are affecting not only subconsultants but many prime professionals. While technology has helped the bottom line, it can only do so much.

More and more, we find that we’re working with strangers — with unfamiliar subconsultants, primes and other parties to a project. We seem to have forgotten the importance of working with people we know — individuals or firms that experience has shown we can trust.

Additionally, many firms are finding it difficult to meet their staffing requirements. New hires are turned loose on projects before they have had the opportunity to learn the firm’s culture or obtain adequate training and experience. This does not bode well for the ability to manage risks now or in the future.

How We Got Where We are Today

In today’s market, there is an unfortunate — and sometimes risky — tendency to separate geotechnical exploration from construction monitoring (what some term "inspection").

Often, prime consultants will select a geotechnical consultant to do the borings and provide a report, then engage a testing laboratory to complete the field monitoring. This may be because primes and owners sometimes look upon testing laboratories as a lower-cost substitute for the continued involvement of a geotechnical engineer of record during the construction phase.

To understand how this thinking developed, we need to look at the evolution of geotechnical engineering. In the 1950s and 1960s, geotechnical engineering was not recognized as the specialty area of engineering it is today. It was common for architects and structural engineers to review a proposed project, then have the structural engineer order test borings, which were then often interpreted based on experience (and, maybe, an undergraduate course in soil mechanics).

This worked fairly well for many projects on sites with favorable soil and groundwater conditions and those that required limited grading.

The overall risks associated with geotechnical aspects of construction were lower back then. More sites had favorable soil or bedrock conditions. In addition, although it is standard practice today to build structures on engineered fill, it was relatively rare just a few decades ago. Rather, it was com-mon to excavate through all fill to reach suitable, undisturbed bearing material.

It made sense, then, to engage the services of an independent testing laboratory to test the construction materials in order to verify that they were in reasonable accordance with the plans and specifications.

The Risks are Higher

But today’s design and construction are often more complicated than in the past. And we’re faced with tougher sites. Sites that were once overlooked are now being aggressively developed, either because good land is too expensive or the site is located in a commercial development area. At the same time, the push toward the outer limits of construction technology continues and there is less room for error.

This can spell trouble in the present litigious environment because design professionals — apart from what the law says — find themselves being held to an unprecedented level of performance.

The law may say we only need to demonstrate that we practice to an ordinary standard of care. But the judges and juries are saying that, if there is a failure or if someone is damaged, somebody must be responsible — and somebody must pay.

Settlements prior to trial are common and those settlements often mean that everyone pays, regardless of fault. (Several years ago I read a story about a structural failure on the East Coast. A hot dog vendor delivering lunches to the workers reportedly had to pay $75,000 as his share of the overall settlement. The drywall installer contributed even more to the settlement, and hadn’t even started to work on the project! ["Every Engineer’s Nightmare," Civil Engineering, February 1992])

Not All Testing Labs are Created Equal

Many prime consultants, owners and contractors may be unaware of the differences in the level of education, training and experience among field technicians working for various testing labs.

Some labs change technicians without regard for the consequences and a high rate of turnover seems common in that part of the materials testing business.

I have seen technicians turned loose on a project, solo, with little technical education, no formal training and less than two weeks of total experience. On one project where the fill was found to be unstable after the paving deteriorated, it was discovered that the technician who tested the fill had been delivering pizza only two weeks before he was sampling soil.

Are such stories uncommon?

Not at all. One of our own employees, who spent a brief time with another firm, told of being assigned to an earthwork project with no training whatsoever other than being given a radiation safety badge required to legally operate a nuclear density gauge. If owners only knew what they were paying for!

Compaction testing is certainly one of the riskiest of geotechnical services. Much can go wrong, the work is extremely weather- and contractor-dependent, and unknowns lurk everywhere. This role requires the highest degrees of skill in all the functions that soils/concrete technicians perform. Yet, many testing laboratories give this kind of work second-fiddle status.

Our firm has been asked to provide a second opinion on several projects where we found the entire volume of earth fill to have been incorrectly tested and under-compacted. Only a properly trained and experienced technician should perform such tests.

The Wolf Watching the Sheep

The potential for problems increases when specifications are written giving the contractor responsibility for choosing the testing laboratory. This is generally done as a method of funding that aspect of the work, but it is a very shortsighted approach. The owner still ultimately pays for the services, indirectly instead of directly.

In this situation, however, the owner has little or no choice in who does the work. Who will the contractor choose: the firm best suited to do the job, the firm that has a reputation for staying out of the contractor’s way, or the firm that has the lowest fees?

And, once the contractor has chosen the testing laboratory and the geotech is out of the picture, who decides when the lab technician should be present on the jobsite? The contractor? This is like asking the wolf to watch the sheep.

If the contractor is working under adverse conditions will he or she call for tests when problems are developing? Or will the contractor have testing completed when things are going well?

Contractors know that most field test results, particularly those that address earthwork, are not well understood by non-geotechnical design personnel — including some civils and architects. Thus, even if test results are poor, those overseeing the work may not recognize that.

Clearly, such attitudes are not in the client’s best interests.

A Few Recommendations for Architects and Prime Civil Engineers

Because of their direct contractual relationship with owners, architects and civil engineers have the client’s ear. They have the opportunity to guide their clients toward what is best for the client and for the project itself. My advice to them:

• Insist on high-quality field personnel when selecting a geotechnical firm or testing laboratory. If you’re not sure about the experience and qualifications of the technicians, ask for a resume.
• Select geotechnical and testing personnel as if you were employing them; you are engaging them to be your eyes and ears on the job. You need to educate your clients about the need for quality services and to recognize that you are best qualified to make these important decisions on their behalf.
• In those situations where an independent testing lab will be used (rather than a geotechnical engineer providing these services), explain to the owner that there can be large differences in quality and experience between various firms and their staff, so they should make their selection with care.
• Unless you have extensive experience with — and a great deal of confidence in — the contractor, encourage the owner to avoid having the contractor engage construction-monitoring services.

If it is necessary for funding purposes to have monitoring costs paid through the contractor, the owner should instead negotiate with a qualified geotechnical firm or testing laboratory and include that cost as an allowance in the bid documents. This will keep the engagement of these technical/professional services from becoming part of the price competition of the contractor’s bid. These services should be evaluated and selected based on quality.

Ask yourself: "Do you consider these services to be important to the success of the project?" If the answer is "yes," do you want to risk having the cheapest, least-experienced technicians on your job, or is it worth paying more for an experienced professional?

Most importantly, being paid directly by the owner makes it very clear to whom the technicians owe their allegiance. (To the quality-oriented contractors out there: Don’t be offended by these remarks. Unfortunately, for every one of you, there are many others whose focus is to get the work done, get paid, and get out, with little regard for the end result.)

Educate your clients. What owner, given the facts, would not choose to engage and pay for these monitoring services directly? If for some reason these services must be funded through the contractor, retain the right to reject the firm selected. Take the time to do your homework and learn about the experience and capabilities of the various geotechnical and construction monitoring firms in your area.

Finally, don’t base your decision on who can provide the service at the lowest cost. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Recognize that careful selection and engagement of geotechnical and testing lab services can lower your risk — as well as that of your client. What have you got to lose? Only hassles, frustration, cost overruns, and finger pointing — with some of those fingers pointed at you.