I am currently working on a design for a micropile foundation system in a glass plant where there have been temperature probes in the ground that show 700F (371C). The plant was originally built on a mat foundation bearing on approximately 3' (1m) of high plasticity clay underlain by shale...
I am a younger engineer (5yrs out of school) so I can't speak to how things use to be in the old days. I think technology is a good and bad thing. The good is that you can use a program such as mathcad to perform calculations and limit the possibilities for errors along with present the design...
In my opinion this is more of an aesthetics question. A permanent wall can be installed with one layer of shotcrete, assuming that you design the facing to the appropriate factors of safety. A typical sequence that I have used is as follows:
Install the nails
Shoot the facing with...