Pile Dynamics celebrates 40 years of engineering and innovation

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Pile Dynamics, Inc. (PDI) commemorated its 40th anniversary on Oct. 12, with a series of events that showcased its past achievements and cheerfully welcomed the future.

The day started with field demonstrations of PDI’s latest technologies to a group of invited guests, including International Association of Foundation Drilling (ADSC-IAFD) director of operations Tony Marinucci and PDI’s representative in China Frank Ko. Thermal Integrity Profiling (TIP) was conducted on two drilled shafts installed earlier that week on the grounds of PDI’s headquarters. PDI also demonstrated a combination of wireless transmission of dynamic pile testing data (SiteLink®) with real time pile capacity calculation (using the signal matching software iCAP®). Pile driving was simulated with a small SPT hammer that transmitted data to the guests seated in PDI’s lecture hall; CAPWAP®-like results were instantly displayed for each of the hammer blows, to the delight of the audience.

In the afternoon, Pile Dynamics employees and guests attended a celebration held at the beautifully renovated Allen Theater in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Fittingly, the expansion of that facility is supported by foundations that were dynamically tested using PDI’s Pile Driving Analyzer®. Several guests had strong connections to PDI’s beginnings and were instrumental for its success. Among them was Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) engineer Jawdat Siddiqi (ODOT funded the original academic research on dynamic foundation testing), Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Professor Emeritus Tom Kicher, Cleveland State University Professor Emeritus John Tomko, and the lecturers for the afternoon.

The invited lectures were preceded, to the applause of the audience, by the release of a new video showcasing Pile Dynamics products and by PDI President Garland Likins’ recounting of PDI’s story from its early days at the Civil Engineering Department of CWRU and continuing to the present.

Silas Nichols, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Principal Geotechnical Engineer, spoke about trends in foundation engineering from the perspective of FHWA, followed by Gregg Lowe, President and CEO of Freescale Semiconductors and formerly with Texas Instruments, who spoke on the future of electronics in our everyday life and tied it into progress that stems from innovations from companies like PDI.

Dr. Adel (Tony) Saada, Professor Emeritus at CWRU, spoke on the impact that research conducted there had on soil mechanics and foundation engineering. PDI recognized Dr. Saada’s 50 years of teaching with a plaque and a gift towards the construction of a new soil mechanics laboratory at CWRU. Also recognized were Frank Ko, for 25 years of friendship and partnership between Earth Products China and Pile Dynamics, and Mohamad Hussein and Marcia Giterman, for more than 30 years of distinguished service to PDI.

The afternoon was followed by a festive dinner and a cake made to resemble a stack of various PDI testing instruments. Pile Dynamics (www.pile.com/pdi) thanks its many loyal clients and supporters that made this a happy anniversary indeed.