 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Geotechnical Engineering Podcast, a podcast focused on helping geotechnical engineers stay up to date with technical trends in the field. I'm your host, Jared Green, and I've practiced as a geotechnical engineer for over 17 and a half years. In addition to practicing engineering, I enjoy mentoring young engineers and first generation college students. I've focused on helping to increase the number of pre-college students that are interested in STEAM majors and fields. STEAM is Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics. In this episode of the Geotechnical Engineering Podcast, which I may sometimes refer to as the Geopod, I'll be talking to John Grillo, PE. Mr. Grillo is a project executive with Keller North America Incorporated. He's been a member of the Keller team since 2011 and has over 15 years of experience as a geotechnical engineer and specialty contractor. John is currently the ground improvement division manager for the Rockaway Office. John has been involved with the design and construction of excavation support, underpinning, micro piles and macro piles, secant pile walls, auger cast piling, ground improvement, and driven piling projects, mostly in the private sector. He's also involved in the research and development of drilling techniques and the procurement of equipment and tooling to help keep Keller as an innovator and head of the competition. John is a licensed professional engineer in the state of New York and also in the state of New Jersey. He's a bachelor's of science degree from Manhattan College and a master of engineering degree from Cornell University. Outside of Keller, John is currently the secretary of the board of directors of the ADSC Northeast Chapter and is the past chairman of the ASCE Geo Institute on the med section. Very recently, just a few weeks ago, DNR engineering news record New York just listed their 2021 top young professionals. And these 20 under 40 include Mr. John Grillo. And with that, let's jump right into our conversation with John. John, welcome to the Geotechnical Engineering Podcast. We're honored to have you. How are you feeling, man? I'm good. Thanks, Jared. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the invite and I'm excited to be here. Excellent. Excellent. Well, if you could in your own words, can you tell listeners a little bit more about, let's say your daily routine? Like, what does it look like working at Keller as John Grillo? So I do a little bit everything. I'll make coffee in the morning. And no, but for real, you know, my job at Keller is to is to promote and build the ground improvement business for our region. And for me, that includes New York, New Jersey, each and half of Pennsylvania and Delaware. I'm responsible for, you know, going out and getting work and managing work and contract negotiation, billing and invoicing, cradle to grave on jobs, not as much being a soldier project manager that used to be a bit more in a management role now with a group of project managers that I work with to get through the jobs. Got it. Got it. So it sounds like you're seeing from beginning to end really in a lot of the back of house as they would say it for the whole division, right? For ground improvement. Yeah. That's great. That's great. And I guess as a ground improvement division manager, you know, I think a ground improvement or I think a foundation design, one of the questions, you know, before you just say we're going to have a deep foundation is what can we do at that soft ground? Can we improve it? Or if there are poor site fills, can we improve them? And that's really what your focus is. So I mean, can you tell us a little bit more about the improvement technologies that are out there? Like how do you actually improve the ground? Sure. So the main technologies that there's two main technologies that we use for mostly for building foundation and a lot of like the intermediate structure where it's not too heavy, where you would have to get something that's a deep foundation. Typically, we do a lot of stone columns, aggregate piers, and rigid inclusions. Those are two main techniques. I mean, there's also, you know, there's all sorts of grouting you can do for ground improvement as well. But mainly, the focus that I work on is typically aggregate piers and rigid inclusions. Because really, I mean, there's buildings like logistic centers and, you know, the three to four story wood frame residential that are going up all over the place. And they're really not too heavy. So when the ground just needs a little bit of help, that's where ground improvement can save the owners and developers a fair amount of money versus say, driving piles or drilling structural piles. Makes sense. And I imagine for slabs as well, like you wouldn't want to pile support a slab if you're sitting on the ground. Exactly, right. You'd have slab on grade, over ground improvement for sure. Okay. And can you break down those two different types just for, you know, for the listeners that haven't done any of this before? Sure. For a structural slab, essentially, as if you had a, the second floor of a building would be a concrete slab, that would be a structural slab. I mean, you're not, you know, would count on any of the support from the soil below it. So you would install a structural deep foundation element, you know, at some type of grid, similar to columns in a building to support that slab. If you're using ground improvement and using a slab on grade, you're counting on the ground to provide the support for that slab and to control settlement, differential in total. But what you're doing is you're improving the ground to accept those, those defamation limits. Got it. And if you have a lot of different types of ground improvement techniques, you know, how do you know which one's going to be appropriate for a job? Of course, it depends. But, you know, what are you looking at to determine which way you'll go? So a lot of that starts at the beginning. I always joke around, like, you know, I got you this big pile of stuff to do and where do you begin? It's the beginning. So I kind of take it in a progression, like, what's, what's the least amount of work we can do? And is that, and I don't mean that the least, like not good enough, but, you know, you don't want to, I don't want to over scope a job and do too much work. So if he's looking at something similar to like a compassion technique, like a rapid impact of passion, that would be like the least amount of work I could do on a job. Does that, does that fit the bill? Well, no, like, well, then the next bucket is, say, aggregate peers. And that works really good. You know, typically up to about 40 feet, I can go deeper, I've gone deeper, but you don't always need to do it. So if you can get that 40 foot up to 40 foot range, where you don't have very thick, thick soft layers, that is it. That's going to do excellent job, excellent job improving that ground. And then if you have the next level up from there would be the rigid inclusion, which is going to give you ability to bridge through like deeper deposits of softer material. Excellent, excellent. And, you know, I say before you were focusing in on ground improvement, because I mean, when I knew you, I thought of you as a deep foundation guy, you know, we're talking about drilled piles and, you know, caissons and things that I saw in many piles. But you made a transition from being, you know, focusing on deep foundations to more ground improvement. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that transition looks like or looks like? I mean, I don't know if you're still in it or are you, or it's done, but can you walk us through that a little bit? No, I tell you that that's, I tell the story a lot because it's been, it's been a wonderful journey so far. Nice. That's how I describe it, I can describe it. So just about two years now, then this August is to August 2020 is two years where, you know, they said, hey, like, you just start looking at ground improvement here, because like that's a market where we're not doing a lot of in this area, but there's market share out there. And, you know, we do this stuff, you know, all over the country, but not as much here. So let's grow this business. And I was like, okay, challenge accepted. This is great. And you could do that about 50% of the time. You do your structural foundations and all that stuff. The only 50% of the time. I'm like, yeah, no problem. So I quickly found out that, you know, like it's, you got to be all in. Yeah. Right. I'm not going to do this, you know, I can't be half pregnant on this stuff, you know, I quickly found out like I had a really hard time juggling it. I had to like really focus in and understand the ground improvement because it was a lot different than what I was doing because previously, oh, I'm going to drill a pile through that. I'm going to bypass that material. Now it's like, wait, wait, hold on. Now I got to work with the material. Let me, let me kind of dust off some of those books and, you know, draw some more circles and go from there. So it was really good to kind of, you know, it was, it was, it was humbling because I had to refresh things that I had learned a long time ago and use those techniques that I haven't used in a while to really understand and learn the ground improvement. I really immersed myself in it to understand and get a feel for it. I mean, I, I, as you know, you are, you're a huge Ralph Peck fan. Yeah. And, you know, you know, the, the, the, the dear book about him, about judgment, I think like nearly, like, I love judgment. You know, I, you know, I love that, right? So I didn't have a spidey sense. Okay. For ground improvement. Yeah. You know, I could look at a micro pile and think, ah, you know, it's fault PSI, right? I didn't have that, you know. And so I've really had to build up a sense of trust from what I was calculating or figuring out what it's going to be and understanding and the feel for, for how to use it and how to use it appropriately. Got it. Got it. And in every project that's completed is another data point, right? So I'm kind of, kind of calibrates the spidey sense in a, in a, in a worry. Now, what are you doing as far as confirmation, like after you have improved the site or you're going back and doing CPTs or borings to improve for So depending on the project requirements, typical structural support job or structural foundation that's, that's not dealing with things like liquefaction or, or, or things like in that nature, um, uh, a, uh, an aggregate peer will do a modules test on confirmed the design stiffness of the peer we had assumed the design. We're doing a single element load test on original inclusion. Um, similar verification tests you would use in a, in a, in a structural pile. Um, and as far as, um, like you mentioned that the post CPT or SBT, um, we've done some work, um, for, uh, for ground improvement that also doubled as liquefaction mitigation. So doing that, we've gone back and we've, we've pushed cones. Um, you know, we've done them readily from say an aggregate peer, you know, away from the center for, you know, how much, you know, check the, the, the furthest point away and, you know, in exact good. And as you get closer, how much better does it get? And how does your factory safety for liquefaction and post earthquake settlements in that nature? Got it. Got it. Got it. And as far as on the geotech, um, on the front end of what you would need in order to bid on a job, boring CPTs, specific lab tests. I mean, what, I imagine more is better than less, but, uh, what's on your wish list? Um, definitely, uh, SPTs and CPTs. Um, you know, the SPTs to, uh, physically touch it and classify it and get some, get some saves and some limits. Uh, you know, consolidation data is great. And the CPTs are valuable because it's continuous information. You're getting, you're getting a whole bunch of data points and you have a whole, a whole lot of correlation data you can grab from those points. Um, um, personally, I'm not the biggest, I get a little, um, fuzzy, uh, when you're over-lowered end values. And I feel like you can, you can seek for clearly with the CPTs personally. Yeah. Um, you know, on some of those data, uh, because if you really get into the weeds and you want to correct some end values, you can, you can keep going down the rabbit hole. And so the CPTs kind of straighten you out a bit. Um, kind of go from there. And I mean, the scale of the job will tell you the scale of how much more testing we can typically ask for and get, you know. Makes sense. Makes sense. And do you find yourself doing more work within, say, uncontrolled fill that was present at the site, or are you more in native material that's just soft? Uh, I'd say a good mix of both. Okay. Got it. Um, I did some jobs where there was a concern, uh, where there was, uh, you know, uncontrolled fill. And so essentially the, cause the sand below it was in great shape. So essentially our aggregate peer system kind of that job I'm thinking about was 10 feet on center. We did 30 years down to peers 10 feet on center. And at that point we had proofed out the, the, the upper fill layer and is very comfortable with the way it would behave at that point. So, you know, and, you know, when the plans behind me were for, uh, for another job we did in North Jersey and, and that was actually like a fiber project. And that was, um, that was deeper aggregate peers in all native material. Oh wow. We didn't have any fill, we only had like two feet of fill at the top that was, you know, was all loose ends. You're into it at that point. Excellent. Excellent. And from what I know of you, you, you've always tried to be on the cutting edge when it comes to research and development of drilling techniques in particular, but what are some of the latest techniques you've been implementing or hope to implement in the future? And of course you don't have to give any trade secrets, but you know, if there's something that some of our younger listeners, younger geotechnical listeners may not have heard about that you feel comfortable sharing? Well, yeah. I mean, one, one technique that I spoke to you about a while ago is when we brought KCFA technology over here. Yeah. That was, that was, I fought hard to bring that here and use it and it's been very effective. And that was always a, that's still a great technology and when in the right spot, it's definitely the right technique. But as of late, I've been doing more work with, you know, installation of stone columns, you know, do your pre-drill, they're not pre-drill, how much energy the vibrator have, how big can you build stone and the original inclusion side, it's been the tooling, you know, heavy R and D focus and the tooling. What if we, what if we change the cutter head around and, you know, what about the grout orifice on the side? How big is that? It's a bottom discharge, a side discharge. What size drill rods? There's all sorts of different variables that, you know, you try and tweak not too much at once so you can see what your control is. Got it. Got it. Got it. How does that work? You go to the shop and you say, I want to change this element right here and then they change it and they test it and they get back to you? Like how does that, what does that process look like? Well, you know, some of that stuff comes down to necessity sometimes. Okay. If you get in a job and the tool comes, that's really worn and this one side of the tool is really worn. I'm like, ah, maybe turn the tooth out a little bit and see what happens. Okay. You know, all sorts of different, you know, Frankenstein tools that you end up making and like, oh, that one worked, but we got to use that one again or, you know, like those pads kind of run parallel with, you know, some of the equipment manufacturers that things that they're making and they're like, Hey, I got this new thing. And I'm like, oh, you know, let me put this in this together. And you know, it's, it's exciting. I mean, that's just the stuff that kind of gets me excited. You know, excited. The tooling is definitely something that's always like, Oh, it's just, there's a better way. I know there's a better way, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when you, you know, I remember when you started your career, you're really, you know, you're in consulting. And when you made that transition over to working for a contract, you really used to talk to me about, you know, well, think about how it goes together, right? It's like, you can't just spec something. I think about how it goes together and how it's actually works. So that's pretty cool. Like I think you had to go to drilling school when you started too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Some of our internal programs were very helpful with, you know, why we do it, things that certainly were how we do it, or just even standing next to the driller. It's a very different perspective. Like when I came to work as a contractor, and I went and stood next to the driller that was on the same payroll I was on. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I'm like, Hey, why do you do this? Why don't you do that? Like, you know, things that like, you know, I previously had a different opinion than before. And, you know, and, you know, there's, there's, there's, you know, this is why we do this. And like, it made a lot of sense, you know, make sense. Like, if that firsthand perspective, when, you know, the driller doesn't think you're someone who's trying to bug him, like you work together. Yeah. We're on the same team, same squad, right? Yeah. That's good. And that reminds me, like, soft skills. I mean, a lot of what we learn in school, a lot of its book smarts, right? It's understanding the calculations, understanding the parameters, understanding the theory behind it. You may get an internship experience or co-op, and you get that practical experience. But soft skills are really important. You should start to move up the ladder. And, you know, what would you say for how you learn those and, you know, what it's meant for you professionally? Um, you know, I've learned some hard lessons, you know, I mean, it's, um, you got to work on your approach and learn how to lead a conversation. And, you know, and to be empathetic, I mean, empathy, I think is kind of a word I use very often as a late, um, because, uh, you know, it's, uh, you know, even say in a meeting with like a developer or somebody, this developer could be, if you don't have empathy for what they're going through or like, you know, they know that if they have to go to a heavy duty foundation, like the jobs are happening, right? Yeah. So it's like, okay, how can I, I'm empathetic to what you got and, you know, I'm going to be here for you and fulfill that role. And, um, and even, even in general, like I always kind of using that empathy is just, just switching over to the, um, you know, just even in the office and with different personalities and, you know, having empathy as well, but also understanding, uh, the other parties world view, like they have a view that they built up with, you know, in their life with, you know, the, how they got to be where they are. And so there's a, there's a, there's a view and a perspective that, that they come to the table with. And so being empathetic of where that may come from or why they may say a certain thing, it'd be very helpful in leading or directing a conversation. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you don't take it into consideration, somebody's motivational values, you could completely say something that kind of spends them in the wrong direction as opposed to encouraging them. So that's, that takes a lot of work. And, you know, I think that people think of engineers as not having that skill set, right? Yeah, I mean, you take that and you get some energy and enthusiasm and, um, you know, and you're going to have a couple of days stumbling, you know, and then all of a sudden it'll click a little bit and it'll get better and better. Just, you know, you got to keep working at it. It doesn't, you know, you know, it doesn't start on day one. No, not at all. Not even a week one or a month one. It takes, it takes some time. It takes some time. Now, you think about your team and, you know, building your team, you know, that relationship between the manager and the staff. I have to imagine that, um, there'll be some challenges, but I have to imagine there are some things that are really rewarding about, you know, what that looked like. What can you share with the listeners? Yeah. So, you know, the group of people I work with is great. I'm fortunate in my position to have the people that I work with. You guys are a lot of fun. Yeah. You know what? The group that I'm working with right now, they're, they're into it and they have passion and drive and emotion, which, which, which works good because I have that stuff too, right? Yeah. You know, it's like a build each other up and it's nice. And like, you know, I feel like my job is to kind of raise them up and like give them the confidence to make the decisions they know how to make and, um, you know, and like grow as a team because, you know, every time there's a new job, we're all learning something new. Yeah. That's true. You know, I've never done the same job twice. Me neither. It's a benefit of geotech, right? Right. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's every, every job's a new opportunity to do better than the last one and learn something new, right? There you go. You can be across the street. It's like, oh, it's totally different here than it was over there. Not what I expected here. Exactly. That's why they call it practicing geotechnical engineering, right? Yeah. Yeah. What advice do you think you could give for geotechs that may be considering a move from, say like a staff or senior staff level moving into management or more leadership goals? What advice would you share? You know, don't, don't be afraid to take a chance. Like a little risk is okay. You know, calculate your risk, understand, you know, what your benefit, what your benefits could be. You know, one thing I learned once was not call it a negative, call it a delta, get your pluses and your deltas. So understand your pluses and delta, do your analysis and, you know, and understand which way it can go. I mean, work hard, keep your nose down, learn everything you can. Because I think part of being, you know, getting to that managed managerial role is, you know, having the, besides the technique, you have the, you have emotional intelligence and technical intelligence. I need to use those both to, to put that team together and put the right people in the right spots. Excellent. Excellent. I know that throughout your career, you've been pretty active in the professional societies. Anything you could share there as far as how to get more involved or why one would want to be more involved? Yeah. So I mean, that's, that was, it's always like a near and dear place to me, the professional sides. I mean, you and I were on a committee together once upon a time and really, you know, the societies that, you know, you know, that meant a lot to me, you know, I went to their events, you know, I know that they look for different people to be on their board directors or their, or their officers of the committee, or the committee, whatever they call it. And, you know, when I heard there's an opening coming up, you know, I started talking to the current leadership and saying, hey, I'm interested. And, you know, when you kind of work your way in because, you know, I, you know, forget that I work for Keller. I love working for Keller. It's a great company, but I love this industry, you know, and like, and I want to see the industry be better also. Yeah. You know, and so it's, it's, it's, I think it's a great thing to be part of something besides, you know, just your company, you're part of the industry, you know. Yeah. I think that's really powerful when you think about it, because, you know, we were in class and we're, you know, learning about what it means to be a geotechnical engineer. And then after you do it for some years, and when you're a part of actually making the industry better, there's something really powerful about having that opportunity, you know. Yeah. I mean, listen, you meet a lot of great people on the road too. I mean, you work with a lot of great people. I'll work with a lot of great people. Yeah. But there's a lot more of them out there. There's a lot more. That's true. True. Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick moment to take a break and we're going to come back just after a moment and we're going to finish this up with John as we have our career factor of safety in segment stick around. Welcome back. It's time for our career factor of safety in segment and geotechnical engineering just like many disciplines of engineering. It's important to incorporate a factor of safety into your design. And we talked about that a little bit today with our guests. But what about incorporating a factor of safety into your career? Today, of course, we're speaking with none other than John Grillo PE. John, the work that you do involves a lot of risk to both you and your staff, as well as to the community in some sense. How have you built a factor of safety in your career, as well as those that you manage to give yourselves a factor of safety in working on construction sites as it relates to safety? So the factor of safety for safety should be pretty high. One thing that our safety team says pretty often is let's go from I think it's safe to I know it's safe. And that really sticks up with me because this industry is awesome. It's also dangerous. So I think it makes sense to know what you're doing is safe. On the job site, did we secure the load? How are we picking this tool off the truck? Because is that safe? I think that's totally worth even the extra minute you need just to check the rigging. And that's to me a very simple thing that is always like, guys, take your time. It's really hot today, guys. Drink some water. It's really important to do those things. Makes a lot of sense. It's usually when folks are cutting corners that something silly happens. And like you say, it really only takes a moment to just think about it, right? That's great. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for sharing all the great insights that you did with this talk. And thank you for your service to the industry. We really appreciate what you're doing for the engineering community. Now, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way for listeners to reach you? Social media or email address? Yeah, email is great. Also, LinkedIn is great as well. Those are the two best ways to contact me. Okay, excellent. What is your email address? So my email address is J.R. Grillo, G-R-I-L-L-O at keller-na.com. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks so much, Jack. Keep up the good work. I hope you enjoyed our episode today. We would love to hear your feedback, comments, and or questions. Please feel free to go to geotechnicalengineeringpodcast.com. We will find a summary of the key points discussed in today's episode, that big episode 10, as well as links to any of the resources, websites, or books mentioned during this episode. Until next time, wish you the very best in all your geotechnical engineering endeavors. Peace.