Construction Reports: Gilbane

The new Virginia Tech signature engineering building is on its way. Well, it was suppose to be on it's way. There was definitely nothing going on while I was there.

Earlier this year we had the project manager from Gilbane, Roger McFarland, come to our class and talk to us. Roger is a very enthusiastic, but very serious gentlemen. He came to my Construction Principles class with a lot spunk, jokes, and stories. Roger explained to us the challenges that he has had with Virginia Tech and some of them were the drawings and schedules of the building. He explained that he wanted to start the caisson drilling early because he knew that once the winter comes there will be a lot of obstructions. This makes sense because in one of my previous blogs, Virginia Tech's own Center of Arts, I explained the complications of drilling in the Blacksburg area. Blacksburg has a creek that runs through it and unstable bedrock in certain places. Mr. McFarland wanted to jump ahead of the game, but today it seemed like there was not any progress. I think that Gilbane was waiting for a delivery of materials or equipment because the site was very organized and open.

On my way to the site, there was a worker sitting on his phone in middle of a blocked off lane (Figure 1). This was one of the two things that was happening.

In Figure 1, it looks like it is some kind of pump that they put out in the road. The reason that they might have located it in the street is so that it could be hauled away easier. When I saw the pipes crossing the road I immediately peaked over the fence to see where the pipes were leading to. The pipes went straight into a hole (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Figure 2.

Maybe this was a pump to get water out of the hole, but if it was then where did they pump the water? I have tried to research what this may be and I have yet to come to a conclusion. I still think that it could be a sump pump system but I do not see where they pumped the drainage too.

The other activity was a dump truck on site delivering gravel (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Just because there was not much going on the site I decided to take a few pictures just to show where everything, such as equipment, materials, and offices are located.