with the community and legislative bodies to outline plans to reduce or prevent limits from being exceeded again. While fence line monitoring is not among the first considerations taken when establishing a new construction project, it is a vitally important part of the site safety ecosystem. Delivering peace of mind through constant monitoring and accountability with accurate, accessible data capture, though they might not be a project manager’s first thought, they should certainly never be an afterthought. About Casella Casella is dedicated to reducing environmental and occupational health risks by developing equipment and technology for dust, noise and vi- bration monitoring. Casella’s core purpose is to create technology aimed at improving the working environment of employees, while providing robust data and equipment platforms to enable organisations to remain compliant with health and safety regulations. The company is an expert in the integra- tion of sensor technology and data management systems that further
improve productivity and overall safety in the workplace. Casella’s range of instrumentation includes real-time dust monitors, personal sampling pumps, sound level meters, personal dosimeters, hand-arm vibration and boundary/fence-line monitors. Casella is a global busi- ness, part of the IDEAL Industries Inc. group of companies, with of- fices in the UK, US, Australia, China and India. The company has provided precision instrumentation since 1799 and supplied eminent figures, including Charles Darwin, with instrumenta- tion for exploration and scientific work. Casella works with a network of specialist distributors to provide local service and client support to those searching out solutions for risk reduction and management. www.casellasolutions.com.
TIM TURNEY is Global Marketing Manager at Casella and graduated as an engineer from Queen Mary and Westfield in London. Since starting at Casella in 1998, Tim has been involved in the acoustics and air sampling industry, specialising in measurement and instrumentation technologies.
UMA Scales up Production on Unusually Large Soil Nail Wall
By Brian M. Fraley
UMA Geotechnical Construction constructed all of the eight required permanent soil nail walls along a roughly two-mile stretch of the Greensboro Western Loop (Interstate 73) project but they were all dwarfed by the Wall 4. To be exact, the total project required 76,000 square feet of wall, 42,000 of which was Wall 4. UMA was a subcontractor to Colorado-based Flatiron Construction Corp., which had been retained by North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to build a 1.5-mile divided highway around Greensboro between Battleground Avenue and Lawndale Drive. “The soil nail walls were designed in-house by UMA,” says President Brian DeSpain, adding that the company utilized licensed engineers on staff. “The state identified the locations and it was up to us to figure out how to design the most cost-effective system.” UMA submitted a proposal in November 2016 and began work in mid-2017. Its engineers submitted drawings for Wall 4 in 2018 and finished construction in April 2019. UMA is no stranger to working
closely with the NCDOT, which represents the majority of its public sector work. No Average Retaining Wall UMA’s scope on Wall 4 was straightforward. The job was essentially to install soil nails and a temporary shotcrete facing to allow Flatiron to finish it off with a cast-in-place concrete wall. However, due to adverse geotechnical soil conditions, a simple install became increasingly more challenging. In a budget-saving triumph, UMA’s proven history and competent personnel made light work of the challenges. UMA Geotechnical Construction constructed all of the eight required permanent soil nail walls on the Greensboro Western Loop (Interstate 73) project in North Carolina.
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november 2020
csengineermag.com
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