The Innovation of a New Pile System to Reduce Environmental Impacts: the Prefabricated Con-Crete Screw Pile

In todays fast changing world, expectations for high quality, sustainable and environmentally considerate solutions in every industry are no longer considered “a nice to have” and foundation design and construction is no different. Whilst the principles of Screw Piles are not necessarily innovative, the Centrum Prefabricated Screw Pile combines the benefits of displacement piling and bored piling to reduce CO2 in both the segment design and manufacture and subsequent installation whilst still ensuring the benefits of the highest levels quality control typically achieved with offsite manufacture of pre-cast concrete piles comes as standard.   The paper will discuss the challenges faced during the design of the pile segment, the manufacturing process and lessons learned from the trials and testing undertaken to date and how these have impacted the overall development strategy.  The paper will also discuss the positive environmental impacts of the Screw Pile with its near vibrationless and low noise emissions during installation, zero spoil and that by the very nature of is hollow core, the ability of the pile to accommodate the installation of geothermal loops, now, or in the future. The paper will conclude with a summary of the commercial challenges associated with bringing a new pile product to market and propose how Engineers and Consultants can collaborate better to achieve greater and faster progress to achieving our collective sustainability and environmental goals.