Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/124234
Left: Fashion House, Toronto, ON. Photo courtesy M & G Steel Ltd. Right: Pan American Aquatics Centre at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. 115 ft joists by MBS Steel. Structural steel by Walters Inc., General Contractor: PCL. Photo courtesy MBS Steel. can be fed into the architect's BIM, it would not be possible," Grimes says. One of the current trends in shop equipment is to thermal robotic equipment that replace drilling technology with plasma cutting. A robotic machine with a plasma-cutting unit removes the tendency of tapering when making holes. "You get a true, uniform hole from top to bottom. True hole technology, as it's called, has been around for about four years," says Eric Miszczuk, a partner at Cooksville Steel Ltd. Equipment like this, Miszczuk says, replaces as many as five other machines and the speed, accuracy and versatility can boost shop efficiency. Innovation is not confined to the shop, but is on occasion, a crucial element of the on-site operations. Walters Inc. was recently involved in a project that required Structural Steel p26-33Structural_Electrical.indd 29 the placing of an additional eight new residential storeys atop an existing 14-floor commercial building in Toronto that was built in 1960. Spurred by the unique requirements of the project, the company developed some proprietary lifting techniques. These were used while the original structure remained occupied. "These additional floors allow for increased density in an existing built area," says Tim Verhey, VP operations and engineering at Walters Group. A natural adjunct to the current trend to automation in the shop and on-site is the girder-slab system. Developed just over a decade ago in the U.S., it was aimed at the residential sector – particularly hotels, apartment towers and senior care facilities, says Peter Timler, corporate business development officer and VP of engineering at Supreme Group LP. He says the system has been applied to approximately 90 construction projects, mostly in the U.S. The heart of the system is an open-web D Beam girder, which is asymmetric; its top flange is about three inches and the bottom one is 10. The girderslab system is designed for routine, on-site assembly of structural steel and precast components. Precast eight-foot hollowcore panels or sections sit on the lower flange, with sections later grouted to one another via saw-tooth openings in the T section of the D beam. So far, only two girderslab projects have been built in Canada. The first, for which Supreme was the fabricator and erector, is the new Renaissance Edmonton Airport Hotel. "By introducing a low floor-to-floor height solution to the owner and design team for the six-level tower section above april 2013 /29 13-04-05 1:59 PM