The Week of November 12, 2018 — Assignment: Setting and Hanging Steel on the North Section of the West Wing

And so, we will start the beginning of the work week, the same way it ended: Working on the 15th floor’s west wing.

The construction site was closed on Monday, November 12, 2018, in honor of Veterans Day. The GFRC company will not be hanging curtain wall panels because the crew will be aligning, fastening, and welding the section set the previous week. The ironworkers will move from the 15th floor south section and begin hanging beams on the columns of the elevator tower (the core of the building) before setting columns and hanging beams on the north side. Welders will start settling in on the 15th floor following the ironworkers who vacated the south side.  Once the steel columns have been set and the beams hung, the west side will have leveled off at its designed height save for the helipad. No doubt there will be a few intriguing and serendipitous nuggets that will be suited for a photo or two. Interior buildout will continue during this short week, which will roll into another short week — the long Thanksgiving weekend. 🔨

Looking to the North

At 6:42 AM, the boom was up, and I could tell by the position of the cable, the ironworkers were beginning the day on the elevator (core) tower. 🔨

Looking Toward the West

At 6:43 AM, the east side of the two towers were bathed in the early morning rays as shadows large and small beckoned the day. 🔨

The Arch of the Stairs

A series of six stacked photos showing the crane’s boom as it Hoist the stairs across the length of the building—east to west—to the 16th floor, where it will be installed connecting the 15th floor to the  roof 16th floor and helipad (16th floor).

The Tunnel

At the west end of the new structure, steel pilings were driven into the ground during the excavation of the pit to build a tunnel connecting the existing Medical Center to the new hospitals at ‘A’ Level. During construction, this west side of the building has received a lot of heavy equipment traffic. It appears that the need for this access space is no longer needed in that a crew is constructing a reinforced form to connect the north and south sides of the cap slab. Up until this time the space in the cap slab allowed a wider space between the foundation wall and the building to lower supplies and equipment to Level ‘B’ and Level ‘A’.

This image depicts the area where the laborers are building the reinforced form (between the yellow lines) to fill in the rest of the Cap Slab. Once the gap is closed, access to Level ‘A’ and ‘B’ will be restricted.

Before there was any steel, and the pit was just a pit, and the iconic towers loomed over the campus, the building contractor made an allowance for a tunnel that would eventually connect the new hospitals to the existing Medical Center. In the near future a tunnel will be constructed and  the wooden ‘A’ Level barricades will be remove

Azure Skies and Steel

As I made my way into the yard, I looked up toward the northeast corner of the 14th floor, and noticed the smoke from the welding torches against the azure skies. As I went through the photos for the day, I noticed an ironworker on the 14th floor holding on to the safety cable, as he surveyed the vast vistas toward the San Bernardino Mountains, the Banning Pass, and the San Jacinto Mountain Range.

The hospital towers with the podium’s west side and south side cloaked with fire protective construction tarps, which provides resistance to rain/moisture, dust, heat, and wind. As one of the laborers told me: “When drywall starts going up, we need to protect it from moisture. All we need is mold on drywall especially in a hospital. Once the building has been covered with the GFRC cladding and the glass windows are installed, we won’t need the tarps.”

This section of the northwest side of the podium will not need the fire protective tarps as the GFRC cladding and glass windows have been installed. From this angle, the steel structure is beginning to look like a building.

asldfjasdlfjasldfjdl

While I waited for the GFRC Panels to be unstrapped from the low-bed, I took a quick ride up to the 14th floor to snap a photo. By the time I got there, the crew was down on the west end of the floor.

I never tire of riding the aerial lift. Upon entering the cage on the 14th floor, walked to the back to see what the ironworker, a few minutes before might have been watching. Aside from the panoramic view, there was a construction crew (see arrow) on the corner of Anderson and Star Streets patch the asphalt.