About Ground Support PLLC
Our History
After many years in the 1990's designing excavation support (shoring) systems throughout the Pacific Northwest while employees at the international geotechnical engineering firm, Golder Associates, and having authored the FHWA Soil Nail Design Manual in 1996, and obtained patents for two new shoring systems called the Suspension Wall System (1997) and the VENIS System (1999), in early 1999, John Byrne and Chris Wolschlag formed Ground Support PLLC in Redmond (Seattle), Washington.
John Byrne, Ph.D., PE
A civil geotechnical engineer with over 50 years of consulting experience in the fields of earth retention and foundation engineering. He is the lead author of the FHWA Manual for Design of Soil Nail Walls and co-author of the Soil Nail Inspector’s Manual. He is the author of soil nail computer design programs and has conducted about 40 one-day soil nail design seminars for Federal and State Transportation agencies around the U.S. In 1993, he led a 10-man team of government and industry officials on a soil nail technology transfer tour of western Europe, for the FHWA. Since 1999, he has designed hundreds soil nail, anchored pile, and other specialty wall systems, including the deepest urban soil nail wall in the world at 96 feet, the 1001 Office Towers (2025) in Bellevue, WA.
Chris Wolschlag, Ph.D, SE
A geotechnical and structural engineer with over 32 years of consulting experience in the fields of earth retention and foundation engineering. He is the lead structural contributor to the FHWA Manual for Design of Soil Nail Walls. He has designed hundreds soil nail, anchored pile, and other specialty wall systems, as well as mat, drilled shaft, and micropile foundation systems. He is the inventor of the Suspension Wall System and co-inventor of the VENIS Wall System, and has designed dozens of deep soil nail, anchored pile, and hybrid shoring systems extending to 102 feet. He designed two of the deepest soil nail walls in the world, the 86-ft deep Bravern project in Bellevue, WA in 2005 and the 90.5-ft deep Seattle House project in Seattle in 2018.