Technical Guidance Note (Level 2, No. 16): Design of reinforced concrete bored piles

Piled foundations are one of the first aspects of scheme design a structural engineer needs to consider during a project's development. It is at this crucial stage that, without any specialist input, the structural engineer must make recommendations based on the typically limited knowledge they have on the subject. This Technical Guidance Note describes the method by which bored piles are designed using the current UK codes of practice, i.e., BS EN 1997 (Eurocode 7). It explains how to interpret soil conditions and design piles to match what has been discovered following a site investigation. The note does not address the types of piling systems that are available, nor the technical issues concerning their installation; these questions are covered in Technical Guidance Note Level 1, No. 23 Introduction to piling. The note explains how to design what is essentially a buried column of concrete to resist forces from the superstructure that are applied to it. It concerns the design of a single pile and not one that is part of a group. For information on how grouped piles differ in their design approach, the reader is directed to Cl. 6.3.3 of BS 8004:2015. (This article was update on 9 March 2018 to correct an error in Table 6.)