Team America!
Last week saw the ‘topping off” ceremony for the HQ project. ie the last piece of steel being lifted and fixed into place…this is a common-place all in team love session! Designers, struct engrs, clients etc travel from miles to come and put their autograph on the steel; work across site stops while all workers gather for a quick TY from the PM and Site Engr. With stars and stripes fluttering in the wind the graffitied I-beam is lifted and fixed into place – completed with a compulsory face stuffing session of sodas, subs and cookies! Good stuff for team bonding!
Now that temps are more like spring/summer (despite a one night sudden sub-zero drop and more snow!!!) work on site this week is going full steam, although I’m starting to believe more and more that there’s no way the contractors are going to meet the deadline of occupancy in 14 months – the pre-cast concrete curtains are still to be fitted; awaiting site clearance for space and lots more steel fabrication and welding. Though the contractors wont admit it to us, it is becoming evident they are under pressure particularly when today they started dropping rebar on the 3rd storey without finishing the steel connections on the ground floor! I look forward to the schedule conference in a couple of weeks. Concrete has been laid on ground areas A-D, while steel and formwork are being set-up for the foundations for the amphitheatre.
I am STILL awaiting approval for access to USACE computer systems and to have an email so I continue to be rather ‘impotent’…8 weeks after arrival in country…the top brass have now waded in and the bureaucratic system is slowly starting to move so I have been told it should be by the end of the week! In a contd quest to make the most of it I joined one of the PEs on a pre-bid meeting/visit to a levee repair on the northern Pennsylvania/New York border (a 9 hour round trip in a day!). Levees are big ticket items that regularly involve congressman wading in to deal with complaints raised by local residents. I have been absorbing issues of staged construction, repair, grading, erosion and sediment control (E&S) as well as nuances/issues of the ‘Public Law 84’. I was amazed at the accuracy of grading and levelling needed on the 14500 miles of national levees…one slight divot or undulation and a river can target it and rip it open when in flood. Below is a completed levee repair (protecting the town of Athens) that is awaiting spray-seeding; note the grading of 1:2, rock armour at the toe, grass matting above the toe to control erosion in the interim. The remaining matting has been blown off in recent storms.
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Hi Howard, Glad the temperature is comming up to working point even if the IT is lagging a little. Notice the HQ project has flooring already in place on the far third of the structure – what form is this? Precast plank or insitu composite?
Leeve repair is interesting in that it looks like politics plays a big part. The top of bank is above the deck level of the rail brindge which would suggest that if the river ever reached that level it would flow along the track and scour out a significant piece of infrastructure before it over topped. Is that intentional? What are the design return periods, flows and levels and for this?
Hi Richard; concrete is being laid as insitu composite – hence the stalling with bad weather.
Your Q uncovers the tip of the complicated and bureaucratic levee repair and maint programme iceberg! Firstly, the rail bridge is about 3ft higher than the top of the levee and has historically never been topped. Every levee has its own history and change of ownership thus records and design data are hard to find; this one was built (badly) c’40s by the local borough (design data unknown unless I dive into the archives of some isolated borough’s library). Some time later it came under the remit of the state sponsored levee repair programme, and was hit by Hurricane Agnes in ’72 when it was likely topped. Out of interest, the left bridge pier ‘sank’ in the hurricane, if you zoom in you can see the rail is being held up by addition steel cribs – it is still ‘structurally sound’ apparently. So, in short, no one knows any design data for this levee. The odd thing with this levee repair was that there was so little money (funded by the federal PL84 national levee repair programme) that no hydro studies were conducted – it was purely a repair, whilst an additional 3-4 foot was added…not based on any data but tied in with another federal organisation called FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) who advised the height raise in line with other levees of a similar height on this river. This USACE office was tasked purely with the levee repair – straying from the mission statement (i.e. in conducting hydro studies etc) results in severely burnt hands for federal engineers, despite sound engineering intentions! Very frustrating when you are trying to produce the best solution for the problem rather than merely putting a Band-Aid on it!
Howard
When I was in New Orleans we had to send 2 engineers north to investigate a crack in a levee. As they were measuring its width the Mississippi side of the crack slipped peacefully into the river – both were OK but it was a contract to be let over the weekend.
Enjoy yourself
Kind Regards
Neil