Cold Front

Ground freezing technology builds in unshakeable stability By Heather Hudson Question: What ingenious construction technique has been around since the 1800s but is reserved for only the deepest, darkest jobs? Answer: Ground freezing. Primarily used to provide ground support, groundwater control or structural underpinning during construction, the technology is mainly used for mine shafts. But its simple, virtually fail-proof design has made it a more popular option for civil projects in recent years. “Ground freezing is still used a lot in mining, but we're seeing it used for civil work like water tunnels,” said Joe Sopko, director of ground freezing at Moretrench, a nationally renowned geotechnical contractor based in Rockaway, N.J.

Tougher Than Bedrock

GeoRocFor celebrates 30 years of drilling and new success in its XS overburden systems By Sarah B. Hood If you ask the folks at GeoRocFor Inc. how business is doing, they like to say they're “getting through the toughest conditions.” That's not because business is bad - quite the contrary: the Sherbrooke, Que.-based company is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2015 as a leading manufacturer of drilling tools and an industry leader in overburden casing systems. In the early 1980s, company founder and current president Roger Charland was working as a sales representative for an equipment distributor in Montreal, handling heavy drilling machinery, but not

Augering Upward

When you have to get below ground, Jeffrey Machine is tops in tools By Kelly Gray When Tervita's Calgary office needed to ramp up their capability on a recent deep foundation job, they turned to Jeffrey Machine for expertise that made a difference. Based in Birmingham, Ala., Jeffrey Machine has become a world leader in drilling tools by working closely with customers such as Tervita, a major North American environmental, energy and construction service company. In this case, they were able to create a 6.1-meter belling tool that was double the diameter of anything the contractor had used in the past. It enabled Tervita to successfully execute the construction of the abnormally large bell pile efficiently and safely.

On the Waterfront

As part of the Halifax Shipyard modernization program, Irving Equipment is rebuilding the Pier 6 Wharf, where Canada's next generation of warships and arctic patrol vessels are slated to be built By Mark Halsall Irving Equipment is Atlantic Canada's largest provider of pile driving, crane rental, heavy lifting, specialized transportation, wind energy and project management services. The company is currently assisting with the Halifax Shipyard modernization program, a large project transforming the Halifax waterfront. Irving Shipbuilding is preparing to build the next generation of ships for Canada's navy that includes six to eight Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships and up to 15 Canadian Surface Combatant vessels. Irving Shipbuilding is investing an estimated $300 million over the next two years to modernize its facilities at Halifax Shipyard. Numerous upgrades are required to be completed in time for the 2015 date to cut steel for the first set of navy vessels, the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships. The investment includes reconstruction of the Pier 6 wharf at Halifax Shipyard as well as land reclamation, dredging and construction of new buildings and a ship launching facility.

Problem-Solving People

Crux Subsurface, Inc. takes an active role in innovation

Towering Above

Liebherr's various divisions breaking ground all over the world By Jill Harris, Piling Canada IntroductionAt the end of October, Liebherr-Werk Nenzing GmbH invited me to attend their annual Liebherr Information Tour for the International Construction Trade Press. The event took place over the course of a few days in Germany and France, with about 40 participants from 13 different countries from the around the world. Piling Canada was the only Canadian publication represented. On Oct. 22, I flew from Winnipeg, Man. to the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. After lunch, our group took a bus to Darmstadt, the location of the construction of a new particle accelerator, the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Europe. Professor Boris Sharkov, the scientific managing director at FAIR, Dr. Markus Bernards, public relations officer at FAIR, Dr. Florian Hehenberger, director of site & buildings at FAIR and Johannes Rhomberg of Liebherr explained the facility, the building process and equipment technology of the impressive construction undertaking.

Rock Solid

Crews handle variety of tough conditions on remote power line project By Kevin Sharp, Don Henry and John Wilson Drilling 67-foot shafts and installing large-diameter caissons into solid rock can be a challenge for even the most skilled drilling contractor. Doing so in an extremely remote location nearly 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the nearest town as winter weather quickly encroaches adds a new level of complexity. Steep cliffs, demanding soil conditions and limited equipment repair services meant the project team was forced to adjust the project's trajectory on the fly. Without cell coverage, crews communicated with each other and the concrete batch plant via two-way radios. Crews from Sharp's Construction Services (Leduc, Alta.) and Henry Drilling (Langley, B.C.) joined forces to drill the foundations for transmission towers for the new 344-kilometre (213 miles) Northwest Transmission Line project in B.C. The work was performed under the general contractors' joint venture of Valard Construction (Edmonton, Alta.) and Burns & McDonnell (Kansas City, Kan.) for the owner BC Hydro.

In Canada for 15 Years

A light year's worth of advancements By Vincent Jue and Stephen Wilson Soilmec brought the first European-style drilling rig to the Canadian underground construction market 15 years ago, in 1998. Today, there are around 325 Soilmec rigs in use across Canada. Some people might call us “pioneers,” but we simply consider ourselves to be the deliverers of the best available technology to our customers. We've introduced several new construction technologies to the Canadian market, such as continuous flight auger (CFA) for drilled shafts, cased secant piles (CSP) for diaphragm walls and other full-cased methods of drilling. When Soilmec entered the Canadian market in 1998, most drilling companies were still using old-style telescoping casing to hold open their holes. Today, using these innovative technologies, our customers have improved productivity and gained a competitive edge in bidding and building.

The TIP is Tops

Faster results, complete coverage, ease of testing and information on cage alignment are just some of the advantages of the new Thermal Integrity Profiler By Lisa Kopochinski Living up to its sophisticated name, the Thermal Integrity Profiler (TIP) is embodying a new, temperature-based technology for concrete foundation integrity testing. The latest development of Pile Dynamics, Inc. (PDI), in partnership with Foundation & Geotechnical Engingeering (FGE), the TIP offers a unique approach in that it uses measurements of the heat generated by curing cement to evaluate the integrity of cast-in-place concrete foundations. (Regions that are colder than expected are indicative of necks or inclusions - a cross-sectional area smaller than intended for the shaft. Regions that are warmer than anticipated indicate bulges - an excess of concrete in a particular location.) “The heat generated by curing concrete had never before been used to assess the quality and shape of cast-in-place concrete foundations,” explained Gina Beim, P.E., a senior consulting engineer and marketing director with PDI. “Measurements may be taken by a probe inserted into access tubes pre-installed in the shaft or by Thermal Wire® cables attached to the reinforcing cage.”

It’s Time to Act! Preventing Exposure to Carcinogens in the Workplace

The Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRSST) published a quick and easy guide to cancer prevention in the workplace in October. The brochure, Are there carcinogens in your workplace? It's time to act!, is intended for OHS officers, employers and workers. The Canadian Cancer Society, which is dedicated to prevention, has welcomed its publication. Developing occupational cancer is a real risk that is often trivialized, as was too long the case with tobacco, partly due to the fact that it may take 10 to 40 years between exposure to a carcinogen and diagnosis of an illness. The brochure, based on the most up-to-date scientific knowledge available, helps identify carcinogens in the workplace, provides examples of preventive measures and best practices for controlling exposure, and proposes a model action plan for eliminating or reducing exposure.

Canada’s Jobs Minister: Canada Job Grant is the First Step in Addressing Canada’s Skills Mismatch

Jason Kenney spoke at 2013 Skills and Post-Secondary Education Summit hosted by Conference Board of Canada.

CenturyVallen Now Offering North America’s First “Green” Hard Hat

V-Gard® GREEN hard hat made from sugarcane reduces environmental impact CenturyVallen, a national supplier of safety and industrial MRO products and services, is excited to announce that it is now selling the world's first “green” protective hard hat manufactured from sugarcane.

Inventors from Pile Dynamics and the University of South Florida Receive International NOVA Award for Thermal integrity Profiler (TIP)

George Piscsalko, P.E., and Dean Cotton, with Pile Dynamics, Inc. (PDI) of Cleveland, and Gray Mullins, Ph.D., P.E., with the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla., have received the prestigious 2013 NOVA Award from the Construction Innovation Forum (CIF). The engineers and researchers received the award for the Thermal Integrity Profiler (TIP), an instrument that uses the heat generated by curing concrete to reveal the shape of cast-in-place concrete foundations. The initial research for the TIP was conducted at the University of South Florida. PDI formed a joint venture with Foundation and Geotechnical Engineering (FGE), of Plant City, Fla. to design the instrument and take it to market.

Selix Equipment Inc. Commits to Improved Customer Service in Ontario

Selix Equipment Inc., the Sandvik Rock Drill dealer for Ontario and the distributor for Mc Drill Technology, makers of multipurpose construction drills and large piling drill rigs, would like to announce that John Cantin has joined the Selix team as territory sales manager for central, southern and south-western Ontario.

Junttan’s First Purpose-Built Piling Rig PM20 Reaches 30-Year Anniversary

Junttan's first ten piling rigs were built on excavators during the period 1979-1983. The excavator-based piling rig was and still is a compromise in many ways, but it was rather efficient compared to standards at the time. Compared to a purpose-built piling rig, the excavator-based rig had many operational restrictions in areas like pile handling, hydraulic output and stability, partly because of the dimensions of the machine and partly because of the basic structure. The transportation dimensions were quite large; the machine was tall and the tracks had to be wide to achieve adequate stability. To eliminate these difficulties, Junttan ended up building its first purpose-built fully hydraulic pile driving rig, PM20. The new rig had a telescopic leader with side inclination cylinders that made it more stable than ever to accomplish the most demanding piling jobs. The PM20 had a hydraulic system that was optimized for the hammer and produced enough energy to run all the required functions simultaneously. This meant maximized working efficiency, which was a huge upgrade to the excavator-based rig. The new rig had hydraulically extendable tracks that brought a new level of stability to working conditions and also reduced the transportation width significantly. Another factor that minimized the transportation dimensions was the structure of the upper carriage frame that was open from the middle. In addition to the telescopic leader, horizontal boom and a movable counterweight, the PM20 had pile arms that made pile handling easier and more efficient than ever. The purpose-built rig didn't need any other machines on the job; it could easily unload the piles, haul them and lift them securely up to the hammer with its telescopic leader and winches. As a final touch, the ergonomics in the cabin were tested with wooden and cardboard mockups to make it unprecedentedly strong to protect the driver in accident situations.

Women Building Futures and TFL Industrial Join Forces in Innovative New Welding Program

WBF, Alberta's premier organization for pre-trades training for women, is pleased to announce a new partnership with TFL Industrial.

Ritchie Bros. Sells More than CA$95 Million of Equipment in Two Days

October's Edmonton auction achieved new records for gross auction proceeds

Builder’s Risk Insurance

A financial safeguard for builders By Dean G. Giles, Fillmore Riley LLP Many construction projects proceed without incident. Unfortunately, experience shows that damage can occur during construction, leading to significant repair or replacement costs. Builder's risk insurance is specifically designed to indemnify against property loss to buildings and structures while they are under construction. In the leading case of Commonwealth Construction Company v. Imperial Oil Limited, the Supreme Court of Canada described the function of builder's risk insurance (also known as course of construction insurance) as follows: