the airport. The myriad roads coming into the airport
looks like a spaghetti bowl from overhead,” he said. “So
as we approached the airport, it became a much more
logistically complicated job, particularly for setting up the
machinery and locating ourselves away from the public
roadways to allow us to complete our work. A great effort
by Anchor’s operation team was required as we spent a lot
more time setting up and tearing down and a lot less actual
time drilling. We also had to have more Greater Toronto
Airports Authority (GTAA) involvement and approval in
order to set up, because now we were beginning to impact
some of their traffic patterns in and around the airport.”
COVER STORY
“The access conditions became more
complicated as we came into the
restricted area of the airport. The
myriad roads coming into the airport
looks like a spaghetti bowl from
overhead.”
– Derrick Speakman,
Anchor Shoring and Caissons Ltd.
Occasionally, traffic lanes were closed throughout the
project, but no roads needed to be closed.
The job was done more or less in sequence, says Speakman.
“We started with Column #1 and proceeding up to
Column #70 with a few jumps in between. The Anchor crews
would do one caisson at one location and then the next would
be on the other side of a bridge,” he said. “We’d have to tear
everything apart and put it on trucks, go underneath, pop
back up on the other side of the bridge and do it all again.”
The crew would install one more caisson, and then tear
everything apart and relocate to the next location. For the
most part, it was one large-diameter caisson under each pier,
The “spaghetti bowl”
PILING CANADA 25
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