PROJECT ARTICLES

The Scaffold & Access Industry Association’s (SAIA) Shoring Council created new Structural Shoring Design Guidelines for a process that Mitch Meadows, chair of the SAIA council, says “doesn’t really fall perfectly into any current category of standards.”

SAFE SLAB AND BEAM SHORING

The Bridgeport Covered Bridge at South
Yuba River State Park in Nevada County,
CA is the only remaining single-span Howe
Truss, Burr Arch covered timber bridge in
the U.S. Originally built in 1862, the bridge
was in dire need of repairs, causing it to be
closed for vehicle use in 1972, followed by
pedestrian access in 2011.

REINFORCING HISTORY

Originally constructed in 1874, the
Admiralty Apartments building in Port
Townsend, WA has seen its fair share of
renovation and updates. But when a massive
windstorm swept through the area in 2018,
the waterfront housing development was
heavily damaged. The three-story apartment building was initially constructed with timber and a brick exterior – all resting on top of concrete piers located directly on the beach of the Puget Sound.

SAND, WAVES, AND SHORING

T-Mobile was experiencing growing pains.
In just five years, the mobile and telecom
provider had doubled its staff, bringing
its Bellevue employee count to 6,200 – up
from 5,500 just a year prior. The company’s
headquarters was – according to T-Mobile –
“bursting at the seams.”

BRIDGING THE GAP

What do you do when a large glulam roof girder fails at your warehouse and you need to repair it? Generally, you could install a temporary shoring tower under the girder, hydraulicly jack the girder back into place, and complete the repairs. But what if there is an extremely sensitive clean room beneath the girder that cannot be disturbed and therefore there is no space to install a typical shoring tower?

WHEN A GIRDER FALLS

Set on the picturesque shores of the Puget Sound, the sprawling campus in North Seattle was originally constructed as an Amgen research site, designed for heavy science and all the equipment that came with that detailed mission. But in 2017, new owners brought a new vision...

DISTRIBUTING THE LOAD SAFELY

Originally built in 1962, the Seattle Center Arena (originally known as Key Arena) is located in the heart of the historic Queen Anne district of Seattle. To take advantage of its prime but densely populated location, the arena was built down into the ground, with a pavilion-like sloping roof that has become a staple of the Seattle skyline.

SEATTLE CENTER ARENA

The annual Burning Man event draws tens of thousands of people to Nevada’s Black Rock
Desert to create Black Rock City, described by the event’s website as “a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and selfreliance.” Every year, a custom-designed “temple,” a spiritual but not specifically religious structure...

THE GIFT OF SAFE ACCESS

This project began when GLY Construction was approached by their client with a challenging request that seemed nearly impossible in the beginning, to create a shoring system to fully support the disconnection of a shear wall from the foundation. The request was to take an existing C-shaped shear wall/elevator shaft that was approximately 80 feet tall and 2 feet wide and rotate it 90 degrees.

NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE SHORING

As our nation’s buildings and bridges continue to age and deteriorate, contractors are regularly challenged with completing retrofit, painting, abatement and other upgrades, without overloading or damaging the existing structures. With more and more federal, state, and local entities rewriting their specifications to put the structure evaluation

A HISTORIC CHALLENGE

If you can imagine the risks of two sumo wrestlers jumping on a child's seesaw, you can start to visualize the challenges facing engineers on the Ballard Drive Bridge painting project. The Ballard Drive Bridge in Seattle is just one of many historic bridges scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest that has maintained regular service for nearly 100 years.

BALANCING NEEDS

Enclosed scaffold systems on bridges can reveal some of the most complex erection and engineering challenges to face the scaffold industry today. Extreme heights, elaborate bridge pro­files, severe wind speeds and other complications regularly push scaffold contractors and engineers to develop inventive solutions in order to complete work.

ENCLOSED SCAFFOLDS ON BRIDGES

The $1.04 billion San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge is getting a lot of support. Waco Scaffold, of Carson, Calif., in conjunction with Construction Enter­prises Inc., of Mill Valley, Calif., is leas­ing Waco 100K/leg shoring to the con­tractor erecting a temporary bypass south of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge on Yerba Buena Island.

BAY BRIDGE GETS SUPPORT

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