Burgess Civil, LLC
Vertical Ventures
What makes it interesting?
In order to construct the tallest indoor rock climbing wall in Florida, Burgess removed a section of the floor slab and dug 10 feet under the slab to get a 40-foot clearance. This was an extremely intricate and detailed scope of work. There were a lot of moving parts, from the logistics of getting heavy equipment inside the building, to height restraints once inside the building, to creating the shoring plan with the help of a structural engineer.
How HCSS Software assisted with this project
HeavyBid allowed Burgess to efficiently keep track of all the different scope items and make sure costs were covered for the bid. The superintendent was heavily involved in the bidding process. While he did not have any experience using HeavyBid, he was still able to sit down and go through the logic in the estimate. How HeavyBid works came to him very easy. Burgess was able to use the flexibility of HeavyBid to change out equipment, productions, materials, etc., while brainstorming how to build the job. Burgess’ HeavyBid system is built out in good detail, including code books. On an intricate project like this, HeavyBid allows them to focus on really thinking through the bid and the costs rather than spending time doing clerical work.
Project Description:
The Vertical Ventures project involved the use of heavy equipment inside of an existing building, and it features the tallest indoor rock climbing wall in the state of Florida. The owner of this project was faced with a dilemma: the existing warehouse only had 30 feet of clearance from the slab to the ceiling. In order to construct the tallest indoor rock climbing wall in Florida they needed 40 feet. The owner determined it would be more cost effective to remove a section of the floor slab and dig 10 feet under the slab to give them the extra height instead of adding an additional 10 feet in height to the structure.
Burgess started by demolishing and removing 3000 square feet of the existing 10-inch thick reinforced concrete slab. Next they mobilized an excavator and front end loader. The existing bay doors had to be expanded by the general contractor to fit the equipment inside of the building. Burgess rented a vibratory hammer which they connected to their excavator and began installing 20-foot-long steel sheets.
Due to the sandy soil conditions on this project, the 20-foot-long sheets would not provide enough support on their own to secure the pit. When Burgess factored in the excavator boom length, 20-foot-sheets were the longest they could use inside the building without damaging the ceiling. They had a structural engineer design a tie-back system where they braced the sheets with structural steel, similar to a whaler system. Then they used structural tubing to tie the structural steel down to the slab. Per the design calculations, this provided enough support for the sheets to safely secure the pit area.
Once Burgess secured the pit with the sheeting, they began excavating dirt from the pit. Without much staging room inside the building, Burgess had to take the dirt outside of the building bucket-by-bucket with a front-end loader. Once the dirt was removed, Burgess lowered a mini-excavator in the pit to begin preparing the slab footers. Next the footers and slab were formed and poured. Once the slab was finished, the concrete walls were poured, which was part of the 40-foot-wall. Once the concrete cured and waterproofing was completed, backfilling between the walls and the sheets began.
The removal of the sheets and backfilling behind the walls was a simultaneous process. Due to lack of staging area, Burgess had to have a flatbed truck do a pick-up on the removed sheets at the end of each day. Burgess is currently in the process of removing the final few sheets and backfilling the final sections.
