3 Floating Walls – Dell Music Center – Scaffolding, Containment Wrap & Tie-Down System
When I first walked on site to take the pictures of the Dell Music Center, I was blown away. I have never seen anything quite like the many steel tie-backs, like marionette strings, holding a scaffold down. I had to take a minute and think about all of the engineering and imagine everything that went into this design.
As I wondered around the building and saw the other anchors and tie-down methods being employed on 3 sides of the stage it really stood out as something unique. It’s not the biggest job we completed last year but it was probably the most interesting. It took some creative thinking, engineering, and building to get this done, and done – safely delivered on-time and within budget.
Superior Scaffold was called in by the GC, Bittenbender Construction, to help come up with a solution creating 3 free-standing walls around the clamshell shaped stage to hold thick containment wrap in place during winter, keeping the elements out, while they renovated the stage inside.
The challenge was how to anchor this giant 3-sided sail and scaffolding so it wouldn’t blow away or collapse inside onto the workers, since it couldn’t be attached to the building. We used every type of tie-down/anchor system imaginable to keep the scaffold upright – from cable tie-downs, ground anchors, concrete block anchors and backup towers.
Scaffolding is usually used to get crews onto the exterior facades not to create actual walls AND then attach what amounts to a giant sail to it. That was the biggest challenge. Keeping the giant sail of containment wrap tied down on 3 sides of an open building and keeping the wind from completely blowing the scaffold away and sending it sailing down the Schuylkill River or drifting around Ridge Avenue.
The GC, engineer and scaffold builders put on an exhibition on the different ways to anchor scaffolding when there was no way to tie it off onto the stage itself. Scaffold usually leans against the structure and is secured or tied into to the building for stabilization. That wasn’t possible here. We had to come up with alternative methods.
We (as if I had anything to do with it – ha) designed back up towers on all sides to essentially lean the scaffold into the building and distribute weight. In front, we used wire rope from the scaffolding down to the floor of the venue.
Special concrete anchors were created just for this job. They keep the scaffold from blowing back into the stage area.
Conversely, there are cables inside attached to the structural steel keeping it from blowing away from the stage.
Then there are special ground anchors holding the right side to the earth.
And on the left side, there are giant concrete blocks sitting on the asphalt anchoring that side down. Wow!
Everyone had to be on their very best game here. Not only with it being an historic venue but with the engineering challenges. Because of what they were trying to accomplish and the need for utmost safety there was absolutely NO room for error.
So the system scaffold, anchors, tie-downs, everything had to be erected to the precise engineering specifications for weight and support of the containment wrap around the stage. Our crews took the greatest care to ensure that they were built to perfection.
We obviously left it up to the engineers to calculate the wind and weight ratios to tell us how many and how much support we needed to add on all 3 sides to keep everything functional and safe.
And when we needed to bring in a stair tower and decking for the roofers to get to the top we all worked together to add this extra weight and scaffolding to the structure.
We are proud to have been a part of this renovation. A shout out to the team at Bittenbender Construction for bringing us along for the ride.
If you need someone to think outside the box – call Superior Scaffold today at (215) 743-2200 and ask for Jeff or visit www.superiorscaffold.com.
The musical number was to accompany a freeform, creative, brain run blog that I originally wrote but my co-workers convinced me to dial it back. But the song still works so enjoy!
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