The Charlestown Bus Facility along the Mystic River is the MBTA’s largest bus garage and critical to daily operations. The existing steel sheet pile seawall, which protects the facility from flooding and river erosion, was severely...
The earliest section of the Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House was constructed in the early 1660s by Pierre Billiou at a time when Staten Island was part of part of the Dutch colony known as New Netherland. Thomas Stillwelll added to the home in the...
The Point LIC, a new commercial development, reinvents two seven-story industrial buildings as the Paragon and Blanchard. The renovated buildings offer open office floor plans, ground-level retail, and other amenities. SGH provided building...
SGH investigated the causes of deteriorating concrete sidewalks at multiple locations in Massachusetts. Deterioration ranged from scaling to surface delaminations.
The Providence Public Library includes the original 1900 renaissance masonry building and the 1953 neoclassical Empire Street Addition. SGH investigated the condition of the building enclosures, prioritized repair recommendations, and identified...
The monumental dome on the New Hampshire State House is gilded in gold leaf. After regilding in the early 1990s, the gold leaf started discoloring. The state wanted to understand the cause of discoloration and identify any inherent problems prior...
The helipad at UMass Memorial Medical Center’s University Campus is an essential part of the hospital’s patient transport operations. Its cast-in-place concrete slab exhibited joint deterioration exacerbated by plowing and deicing...
The swimming pool at Medford High School was constructed in 1970 and exhibited spalling, staining, leakage, and exposed corroded reinforcing bars on the underside of the pool deck; corrosion of the pool piping and pump components; and staining of...
The pool complex at the War Memorial Recreation Center was designed and built around 1955. The complex comprises three separate pools (a 31 ft diameter circular beginner’s pool, the 43 ft by 76 ft main pool, and a 33 ft by 41 ft diving well...
Completed in 2004, Philipsburg Elementary School is a two-story structure with epoxy terrazzo flooring installed on the concrete floor slabs in corridors and other common areas. Shortly after construction, school personnel observed liquid-filled...
Approximately half of all of today’s commercial and institutional buildings were built before 1980¹. Many of these buildings were conceived and designed for generations of use, but have outlasted, or will soon outlast, the...
A long performance history dating to the time of the Romans shows that concrete can be a very long-lasting material that requires very little routine maintenance. However, concrete is not invincible.
SGH's Payal R. Vora and Jeffrey A. Bowlsby published a paper in the ASTM E06 Selected Technical Papers 1549. The paper, titled “The High Costs of Minimum Quality Cement Plaster (Stucco) Assemblies: A Performance Case Study...
By: Robert Holland, Kurtis, Kimberly E., Moser, Robert D., Kahn, Lawrence F., Aguayo, Fred, Singh, Preet M.
Abstract: The article presents a forensic investigation of precast prestressed concrete piles removed from the I-95 Turtle River Bridge, near Brunswick, GA. The piles exhibited extensive damage that led to the discovery of unexpected threats to...
Abstract: Recent changes in the installation and composition of floor finishes for concrete floor slabs have made these materials more susceptible to moisture- and alkalinity-related deterioration. This article reviews the sources of moisture in...
Abstract: This paper describes a project involving the evaluation and structural repair of post-tensioned (PT) concrete garage decks. The suspended parking deck slabs exhibited numerous signs of distress, deterioration, and other conditions which...
Many historic buildings are subject to deterioration from water penetration through the building envelope and into the building components. Unless the underlying structure is inspected and repaired concurrently with the failed building envelope...
Just like in medicine, early detection provides the best chance of limiting losses when it comes to facade performance. The top five tell-tale signs of problems are: cracking, displacement, leaks, material deterioration, and corrosion.
Abstract: The identification and rehabilitation of circular prestressed concrete tanks to increase their service lives by implementing tested standards such as ANSI/AWWA D110 and ACI 372 is discussed. A prestressed concrete tank is mainly a...