Phoenix Industrial designs innovative scaffolding solution
The International Control Dam, which spans halfway across the Niagara River, is in need of repair.
With 212,000 cubic feet of water moving in the river, it presents a tough challenge, with work having to be done underneath the bridge decking to reinforce the structure.
It was challenge perfectly suited for Phoenix Industrial Services, an industrial scaffolding business located in Sudbury. Dunn-Wright Engineering Inc., GDB Constructeurs and Phoenix Industrial collaborated on a design for a scaffolding system that would allow the work to be performed safely.
“I learned from this project that you can get anywhere if you put the right heads together, and that is what we did,” said Phoenix Industrial Services president Paul Lynds. “We are in the business of accessing the inaccessible.”
The project began in October 2014 and is slated for completion by November 2016. The repairs being done involve new steel beams being connected underneath the bridge decking of the dam. The job required careful planning. Not only was safety of the workers the top priority, the top of the dam, which includes the bridge decking, had to be left unobstructed and open to vehicle traffic.
This forced Phoenix, Dunn-Wright and GDB to get innovative. They designed the scaffolding to hang off three 12-foot steel beams. The 12-foot steel beams are anchored to two 50-foot steel girders that are themselves anchored to the top of the piers running parallel with the dam.
“This project is probably the most challenging one we’ve ever done in terms of safety and work requirements in the 14 years we have been in
business,” Lynds said.
“Normally, a barge would be brought in to work under these circumstances, but it can’t be done with the flow rate of the river. You can’t just shut off the flow of water in the river. We had to come up with a unique design. We are hanging underneath with steel trusses, sourced from the United States, supporting the bridge deck.”
Phoenix has six scaffold systems working on the dam. They will leapfrog one another as they progress down the structure, which extends 1,550-feet into the Niagara River. They feature 14-foot wide aluminum work decks to cut down on weight and were designed to withstand a steel beam falling on them without breaking and causing workers to fall into the Niagara River.
“They were designed for the unthinkable,” Lynds said.
With work being done year-round, the winter presented some tough challenges. Phoenix has between four and eight employees working on the project at any given time.
With freezing temperatures and plenty of moisture in the air from the roaring river, they had a tough task each morning before they could even begin working on the project.
“Every day in the winter, our guys spent the first two hours knocking ice off the scaffold,” Lynds said. “It had to be done because so much of it would build up on the bottom of the scaffold. It then had to be re-certified for safety. Then the real work would begin. We had some obstacles along the way at the start, but we overcame
them.”
A project like this is why Lynds is in the business - it fuels his passion.
“This project is cool,” he said. “We have never been faced with a project like this before. It’s now something we can add to our repertoire. This is what drives me - coming up with a design to take on a challenge.”
