Award

"The man of steel" cabin – the Rob Third family retreat in Whistler, B.C.; Exposed steel structure under construction at the TELUS Garden project in Vancouver, B.C.; Section perspective of the USTA Flushing Meadows project in New Jersey. Cast steel node undergoing heat treatment prior to delta frame fitting at the Queen Richmond Centre West, Toronto, ON. A PR IL 2016 | 37 Structural Steel PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY GEORGE THIRD & SON; KWH CONSTRUCTORS CORP.; CAST CONNEX; RENDERING COURTESY WALTERS GROUP Besides useful tools like the new guide for specifying AESS, the structural steel sector seems likely to benefit from some new products or systems. One that is attracting interest is called SPS. Described by Intelligent Engineering Limited (IE), the company that markets it, as "The first new heavy engineering material in 150 years," SPS, which stands for sandwich plate system, consists of two metal plates bonded with a polyurethane elastomer core. Developed by IE with BASF, which supplies the core material, the structural com- posite SPS is being used in a variety of applications including structural flooring, stadium bleachers and terraces, bridge decks and the repair of maritime and off- shore structures, IE says. It is also being used in city buildings. "I think SPS is one of the most exciting new things to come along. It's a new structural composite. We have successfully used the product in New York City on a building project and are currently finishing up on a project for USTA in Flushing Meadows, New Jersey," says Walter Koppelaar, president of Walters Inc. Another relatively new line of products is also making headway. Cast steel con- nectors and other structural components from Cast Connex Corporation have only been available for a few years – the company was founded less than a decade ago – but appear to be achieving market share via some high-profile and prestigious projects. Among these are the Royal Botanical Gardens visitor centre in Burlington, Ontario, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California. Another project using Cast Connex products, the Queen Richmond Centre West in Toronto, includes both a renovation/upgrade of an existing building and the addi- tion of a new multi-storey reinforced concrete office building perched atop three 70-foot-tall architecturally exposed structural steel delta frames. Cast Connex pro- vided design-build services for the architecturally exposed, 35,000-pound cast steel nodes that form the centrally-located kernel points of the delta frames. "The nodes are of white tubular elements, and along with the elevator core, they carry the lat- eral load and a portion of the gravity load or weight of the structure above, which is about 11 storeys," says Michael Gray, VP of Cast Connex. The one-metre-diameter tubular members were welded onto the central nodes, which were designed on a one-off basis for the project. The product lines and approach of Cast Connex, which makes use of 3D printing technology, is perhaps well-suited to the AESS trend. "Everything we do involves casting. Our work on the Queen Richmond project is very architecturally driven. Without a casting, you can't make the shapes we do," Gray says. Cast Connex partners with selected foundries but assumes responsibility for manufacturing and quality. It has a range of off-the-shelf connectors and other products including extra strong ones and components suitable for high-risk seis- mic zones. The company's website includes a number of technical papers on con- nectors. One of these, by civil engineering professors at the University of Toronto, validates the technology of some connectors from Cast Connex "in seismic-resistant braced frame applications." Another specialist firm, KWH Constructors, might pass as unexceptional, until you look closer. It provides erection services, and might first appear as just another on-site service outfit in the structural steel sector, but, when viewed in conjunction with its subsidiary, Somerset Engineering, some unique attributes come into focus. Somerset Engineering was founded in 1981 to provide construction engineering services. Services included erection estimates for labour and equipment, erection schemes and erection site supervision. Today, the engineering subsidiary has 10 engineers and three engineering technologists on staff. "Somerset designs how to build steel structures, especially when something complex is involved. It provides to both KWH, internally, and to other, outside, third-party construction companies an engineered, stamped erection scheme or procedure. As new tools enable cost- effective elaborate designs, there's more need for the kind of services that Somerset offers," says Jeff Mullins, a principal at both KWH and Somerset. In the 1980s, when Somerset and then KWH were launched, there were no schools of engineering or colleges providing programs in construction engineering, Mullins says. Both he and Somerset's founding principal Peter Saunderson studied civil engineering in the U.K. and, independently of each other, had begun to learn the ropes of construction engineering while working for their respective employers. They originally met in the early 1970s and then worked together in the period 1984 to 1986 on the Alex Fraser Bridge site. Mullins joined Somerset in 1986. Mullins makes the point that construction engineering is specialized and quite different from design engineering. In the early days of the two firms, not only were there no schools teaching it, but virtually no firms on the continent specialized 100 per cent in construction engineering. Somerset soon had clients all over North America. Even in 2016, however, with schools offering courses and other firms with a focus on construction engineering, the combination of KWH and Somerset is unique, Mullins says. He expects the sector to grow, not just because of increased design and proj- ect complexity, but also because of regulatory requirements, mostly around safety. On the economic front, the structural steel sector mostly sounds a positive note, though this is certainly more pronounced in some regions than others. "We've been busy for quite a number of years. There have only been about two slow downs with lay-offs. They were of four or five weeks' duration and we hired everyone back. It slowed a bit since the fall but it now seems to be picking up," says Mel Grimes, presi- dent of M&G Steel Ltd. Grimes also notes the trend to complexity and exposed steel, but points to a range of project types in southern Ontario, including a large paint shop for an auto-maker the firm recently did and a 500,000-square-foot maintenance facility for rail transit. A

• Cover