as well as to companies who need and want to provide efficient and safe parking for its employees and clients. Setting the stage for a successful parking project is just as important as it is for a high-rise project: deter- mining the construction method that best benefits the project, choosing the right partner, and ensuring all parties have set expectations. Delivery Method Construction delivery methods include three non-traditional: Design Build, Design-Bid-Build, and Construction Manager at Risk. These methods are becoming increasingly popular within the construction industry because of the embedded turnkey solutions and potential for inclusion of prefabricated elements to further enhance the project engineer can actually see the cross-section as it is with the design, and they can measure and revise blast slopes as needed.” The data from the platform is shared among project managers, survey- ors, superintendents, engineers, and others within Zak Dirt. Beyond that, the project team uses Trimble Stratus to show project up- dates and relay progress reports to owners. “We’ll pull it up with them in the room and show them cross-sections, or we’ll print the reports,” Mancina explained. From there, “we will print them the DXF CAD files,” handing it over to the customer to maintain transparency about where they’re at on the project timeline. Beyond Boulder Benefits For the CO 119 Boulder Canyon Improvements project, the topo data is all in one place, which allows Zak Dirt to better coordinate the lo- gistics on the project including vehicle movements and earth moving. With the reliable, accurate and current topos, the team is spending less time processing, and more time diving into complex measurements, analysis, and creating new insights. “We’ve used it to make some designs for access; we’ve built some files so we could access down into the river to do some of the work,” explained Mancina. “We’ve flown the site, and then did a volume com- parison to see if we have all of the dirt we need right there,” instead of trucking it in from some other part of the worksite. Bottom line, he said, “We know what we’ve done and what we have left to do.” The accessibility of the data has started a chain reaction of new or more in-depth ways of using worksite data to track progress, quantities, logistics, and more on this project and future projects. Mancina summarizes it best: “The most useful is getting the topo done quickly and having accurate information to compare, to get our volumes, or to know how much is left to do. Getting that information fast is often the difference between getting a project done on time or going over.”
It’s easy to see material to be moved - in red - by comparing the current surface to the final design in this image.
“Now we can just fly it, do a comparison, and say, ‘Here’s how much rock was taken off the mountain.’ Very simple,” explained Mancina. To keep track of quantities, they fly the site twice a month while blasting occurs. “Now, for the most part, we have our files within 12 hours, which is awesome,” noted Mancina. “We’re able to fly it and do cross-section comparisons to where we are at now with the design. The Finding the Right Design and Construction Delivery for Structured Parking By Mike Benford Imaging like this show cut values to final design, as well as a cross section of the most recent flight and the previous flight to highlight changes at the surface.
Let’s face it, parking structure construction is not sexy but it is important to the growth of a city, traffic patterns, the people (and cars) using them,
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csengineermag.com
december 2020
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