Early in the design stages of the project, the design team was tasked with providing innovative solutions for optimizing foundation design for the project. One option that was proposed included performing pile load tests at select bridge locations. As the bridge design was undertaken in accordance with Limit States Design, the advantages of conducting a load test included the ability to adopt a soil resistance factor of 0.6 for the design of the bridge foundations, compared to a soil resistance factor of 0.4 if no testing was undertaken. There was also the possibility of increasing the ultimate soil strength parameters, depending on the results of the load test.