As part of New York State’s plan to add hospital beds to care for both non-coronavirus patients and those infected with COVID-19, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with local construction firms, erected temporary field hospitals using the campuses of two Long Island, New York colleges. At Stony Brook University, a $155 mil- lion, 255,700-square-foot, 1,038-bed facility built by Turner Construc- tion Company is ready. Just 15 miles to the west is the completed 207,000-square-foot, $118 million, 1,022-bed unit at the State Univer- sity at Old Westbury built by AECOM Technical Services, Inc. Work on each took three weeks. Both field hospitals were built on turf that would easily flood from roof runoff during even a medium rain event, making the stormwater control system a critical component. “In order to accommodate the massive flow requirements for stormwa- ter from the tent roofs, we used 12-inch double wall corrugated pipe to set up a drainage system from the gutters that we attached to the roof of each of the buildings,” explained Josh Merrick, construction project manager for EAI, Inc. Environmental Management Services (Jersey City, NJ) at the Stony Brook site. “The majority of the pipe needed to be run under newly built ambulance roadways and into un- derground swales that were dug to handle the heavy stormwater flow without flooding the surrounding landscape. The system was designed to handle 1,230 gallons a minute.” STORMWATER DRAINAGE FOR EMERGENCY FIELD HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION Concrete curvature dam: This type of project measures the structural health and seasonal movement in a concrete curvature dam. An auto- mated monitoring system was necessary due to the safety and struc- tural health concerns of the dam structure and the length of the project (greater than five years). Daily measurements for multiple points over long distances were required and even though communications posed a challenge, an automated system was preferred to ensure repeatability of measurements over the lifetime of the structure and real-time alarm- ing and notifications of movement. 1. Site size is 500m x 500m with 200+ points to be monitored 2. Permitting and time windows to access the site is limited. 3. Power and connectivity can be accessed from local dam infrastruc- ture operations. 4. The expected movement is millimeter-level, but alarms should be raised when centimeter level movement is detected.
5. Measurements are required once per hour. 6. Movement is occurring from seasonal change causing stress in the dam structure. 7. The expected movement is millimeter-level per day or week. 8. The site provides a large footprint to install the proper targets and instru- ments for reliable measurements. 9. Data is required within a day of measurement for proper analysis. No matter the project size, most construction sites will benefit from either a manual or automated monitoring system. Determine the ROI potential and discuss these options with a monitoring service subcon- tractor to help implement the right system for the project. If anything, the construction crew will be happy to have another layer of safety added to protect both them and the project.
More than 600 feet of pipe was used at each job. Runoff goes into several swales that contain the water and allows it to percolate into the ground. The five buildings at Stony Brook are actually tents constructed of heavy-gauge vinyl that is stretched tight over the frame, which makes rain cascade faster. The largest is 140 feet by 300 feet long. “We selectedADS N-12® pipe because we needed to handle more than 1,000 gallons a minute for our original design, which was to run all the pipes above ground as part of the gutter system to capture the flow of the entire roof’s water. Due to the fast paced “design-on-the-fly” style urgency of the project, we ended up having to change the layout to accommodate the equipment of other trades. We had to completely redesign what we were building out there to make it all work together. The field hospital at Stony Brook University was completed in record time. Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
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csengineermag.com
January 2021
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