Spent the greater part of last weekend attending the CISC (steel construction) Educators forum. Many similarities to the Steel in Fire forum which was back in Europe. It was quite interesting and a really good chance for open dialogue with many industry organisations. Particularly seeing a number of very interesting constructions being made was also fascinating (from bridges, to tall buildings, to even heritage and conservation of buildings). At the meet up I gave a progress presentation regarding efforts in Canada to advance Performance Based Fire Design frameworks focus being on steel construction. The presentation I gave was more for viewing as education and a state of the art of fire engineering for the steel community in Canada. Basically where we are in Canada versus where other countries are with respect to advancements and their research, it was received well though id say with a touch of controversial flare.
Tall Buildings Under Construction
Below is a short photo montage of a composite steel structure as its being built from floors under construction to finished – i think from an educational stand point that is important for students to see the construction, not just write about it or read about it. The pictures first illustrate the construction of the floor from the placement of the beams (trusses in this case), to the placement of the corrugated steel deck; to the placement of the smoothed steel mesh; to the poring of the concrete, before applying fire protection to after; and finally a nearly finished floor:
When finished the structure should be over 50 stories tall. I also included a short rather lengthy video of the forty story freight climb…..
Heritage and Conservation Construction
What I enjoy alot of about teaching at Carleton is learning the programme, its similarities to Europe its differences. One of the biggest challenges for me was to wrap my head around conservation of heritage structures. In Calgary I’d say this was a hot topic. We had a very good example of the integration of a brick joisted 5 story building with a contemporary music centre. One of the unique challenges with that was the occurrence of a flood during preservation of the brick bilding. My favourite part was during the preservation of the facade they uncovered ‘ghost’ signs and preserved these on the face of the building. The contemporary music hall uses a terracotta facade. Construction of this centre is nearly complete.
Bridge Construction
My fourth year design group is undertaking a prestressed concrete bridge design for havey traffic, the latter part of the trip involved seeing two unique pedestrian bridges which were constructed at a price tag of about 25 million each.
And there you go, a unique engineering trip with lots to show and interesting new meet ups. If only the weather was warmer.
