The Great Unknown—What do you do when:
• A major amusement park solicits bids to seal several miles of 50-year old concrete cold joints in a never-coated, several acre immersion environment – one viewed by thousands of happy tourists every day of the year?
• Half of it is out in open sunlight – and rain – and the other half is in a dark, musty cave?
• There will be a minimum of seven planned mobilizations?
• Multiple trades will make the place look like a WWF convention gone mad?
• Mudpits from adjacent runoff mysteriously appear, sucking tools away like the LaBrea Tar Pits?
• No one knows how hard (or soft) the concrete is, plans are redrawn weekly, and schedules change with the wind – except for a drop-dead date etched in . . . concrete?
You just do a little value engineering – take the specification, massage it, build a brand-new polyurea rig for confined spaces, save them money, build them a better mousetrap - and hope nobody torpedoes your creative ideas out of the water . . . |
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Everybody on Track – Like It or Not
This was the definition of a "fast-track" project; take a couple thousand feet of track pedestals for huge, heavy ride units, miles of expansion joints, vertical wall joints, slopes, docks – and tie everything together with thousands of feet of polyurea caulking, 300 gallons of epoxy primer, innumerable rolls of geotextile fabric (custom-sized to fit) and 3,000 gallons of 100 percent pure polyurea coating. The original specification called for polysulfide sealants in all the joints, coated with 60 mils of pure polyurea using four-ounce geotextile fabric reinforcement – but knowing the critical-path constraints and cost issues involved, Innovative Painting & Waterproofing Inc. President Donald Dancey and Vice President Jim Sliff engineered and submitted a unique but extremely successful aggregate filler system for all the open horizontal joints, with a modified coating system detailing Nitoprime 30 over the entire joint area, eight-ounce geotextile fabric reinforcement, 150 mils of IC-2480 pure polyurea applied by heated, high-pressure plural-component spray, plus a mile or so of keyways at vertical and slope coatingtermination points. All value-engineered systems were developed in accordance with manufacturer’s specifications and/or field recommendations.
This allowed Innovative’s PDA-trained crew (Intro to Polyurea, Surface Prep and the Spray Applicator Course) to seal the joints and provide reinforcing fabric and coating the same day, something impossible if the original specification h been implemented. Not only would the process be faster – the joints would take movement better and be far more durable than with a sealant system. The only real “cross-your-fingers” issue was the keyway process, and luckily the half-century old concrete was both hard enough to precisely hold a ¼” keyway and soft enough to grind smoothly.
It wasn’t until midway through the process that Innovative’s team realized how critical this modified process was – other trades and their equipment were packed into every work area (usually at the worst possible times), safety plans were revised daily . . . and if not for the quick curing and re-engineering of the polyurea systems used, the entire waterproofing system would have been destroyed section-by- section. From plaster dumped on fresh primer to workers tromping through freshly coated joints, nothing was left untouched. Speed, precision, training, great support from Jeff Mosely and the Degussa staff plus superb coordination among Innovative’s crew members kept the disruptions to a minimum – and the product curing cycles were, of course, key elements to a successful project. In only a few cases were Don or Jim needed to intervene and lobby the project manager for access control, which kept relationships on a smooth, professional level.
Lessons Learned
The customer learned a lesson in the REAL value of value engineering – if the alternate proposal carefully developed by Innovative had not been accepted, the schedule would have been a shambles. Innovative learned the value of investment in a compact rig specifically engineered for confined areas – a typical “race car” hauler polyurea rig would have been simply unable to reach the work area at all, and individual pieces of equipment would have been accidentally disconnected, beaten, dirtied and otherwise thrashed – it took creation of a new concept in compact polyurea rigs to accomplish this daunting task. And most importantly - happy amusement park visitors didn’t even realize that a 50- year old ride was being restored using “21st Century technology” 100 percent solids coatings– less than 50-feet away!
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