Piering and leveling

Once again, construction week 2 has seen a late surge of progress with earthworks contractors bringing out the concrete truck, pump and laser level.
There was no progress until Friday afternoon, when the boys arrived, drilled the holes and filled them with concrete. According to the engineering plans, piers are placed along the load bearing areas, drop edge beams/building perimeter and a few mass piers in the middle of the slab (keep reading to have a look at the engineering plan).

So the ground is cut from the front, distributed as fill through to the back and the soil is retained via Drop Edge Beams (DEB). We will need a step just beside the back edge of the garage and a single step out of from the laundry door. We also need a couple of steps on the back steps from the alfresco.
What appeared to be a flat level site when we purchased the site, is actually a site that slopes 1 metre in 14.
You can see the engineering specification below. Lots of piers!

Engineering Design - Footings, piers, waffle pods & beams. Dashed lines depict the lines of the steel formwork between the Waffle pods.

Filling holes

Saturday morning, the contractors return to level the site, clear the excess fill, and pack the fill. According to both the architectural plans and the engineering specification, the relative ground level should be an even 39.5m. This means an average 300mm of fill with the bottom corner getting 400mm of fill (DEB 400). This bottom corner feels loose and quite soft.

Soggy fill down in the Family Room corner of the slab. You can also see a 'scraped' pier in the top left corner.

 I had a good look at the site today (Sunday 9/8/15) and found that the leveling completed yesterday appears to have covered all the piers except those in the garage. I'll speak with the Site Supervisor to confer with the earthworks guys as to why the piers are not exposed. The engineering specification states "All piers, slab and footing reinforcement shall be inspected by the engineer prior to the pouring of concrete. Give 24 hours notice to the engineer". How can you issue a certificate for the design if you can't sight the piers?


Hmmm. where did the piers go? You can see in the pictures below, the piers appear to have been covered by soil.

Piers in the foreground, but where did the rest go? Where are the piers for the drop edge beam on that back edge/ fill?

A call to the engineer and Site Sup is on the agenda.

I must say, when i was sticky beaking at the other Rawson KDR in 'Oatlands' last weekend and I didn't see all the piers either. I was discussing my concerns with a good friend today, and I'm now resolved to get this cleared up. I just can't accept anything less than the engineering spec on the foundation slab.