Granger Construction is leading the industry when it comes to utilizing high-tech drones to positively impact projects.
The Acrisure Amphitheater project currently underway in downtown Grand Rapids is the latest project to benefit from Granger’s in-house drone capabilities. This high-profile project involves constructing a new 12,000-seat outdoor performing arts venue that sits along the Grand River and will offer a state-of-the-art facility for national and local talent.
Granger is serving as the design-assist structural concrete contractor on this project, which involves some very unique architectural design elements that require innovative strategies and some highly technical concrete placement to ensure both structural integrity and design intent.
For example, this project has 75’ tall cast-in-place stage walls, an exposed architectural concrete seating bow and a canopy the size of a football field, which is also shaped like a football, that sits over the stage and seating area.
Contractual obligations require Granger to document all anchor bolt and embed placements to ensure they meet the required specifications. Anchor bolts are single fasteners, or bolts, that typically attach structural support objects vertically to concrete to provide stability and prevent movement. One end is secured into the concrete during the pour and the opposite end is threaded into the structural support system. Embeds are larger, often custom-shaped metal pieces embedded into the concrete, providing a more substantial anchor point for attaching horizontal structural components to the concrete foundation.
At the Acrisure project the anchor bolts and embeds connect to structural steel, and if out of place, they would not match up with the connection points on the steel columns and beams. This would result in extra work in the field to replace the misaligned bolts or embeds, costing the project both time and money.
Recently, the Pioneer–Barton Malow joint venture team managing this project completed the installation of the two steel nodes that serve as the massive base for the six steel columns that will help support the nearly 2-million-pound canopy. The nodes, each weighing 16,000 pounds, were installed without incident thanks in part to the accuracy of the anchor bolt placements within the foundation columns that hold these cast steel structural nodes.
While technologies such as BIM and robotic total station systems have greatly improved design documents and provide more precise layout capabilities, it is still important to verify and document details of anchor bolt and embed placement. Granger is utilizing a drone equipped with state-of-the art laser scanning (LiDAR) technology to perform this service, which is significantly faster, safer and provides more detailed data over traditional documentation methods such as manual inspection or stationary cameras.
