The UMass Medical Utility Tunnel Project located at UMass Medical School has been selected as the feature story for December's issue of New England Construction. The text of the story can be found below.
Steel Prices Drive Rentals
Slide Rail System on site of UMASS Medical Center Project.
By Joanne Ray -- New England Construction, 12/8/2008
United Rentals, Inc. is the one of the largest equipment rental companies in the world with an integrated network of nearly 700 rental locations in 48 states, 10 Canadian provinces and Mexico.
The company's 11,000 employees serve construction and industrial customers, utilities, municipalities, homeowners, and others. The company rents more than 20,000 classes of rental equipment with a total cost of $3.9 billion.
Branch Manager Rick Buck and his team at United Rentals — Trench Safety Division in Shrewsbury, MA, have been a leader in the rental industry in the New England area for the past seven years. According to Buck, the economy has drastically shifted the rental trends in the past year.
"The homeowner market is drying up, making my division shift to more commercial, industrial and university projects," Buck said. "This year the major push is on gas station rehab, because the government mandated that by December 2009 underground fuel tanks have to be brought up to code."
Buck said that since 2007 his division of United Rentals has seen an increase in the rental of all shoring equipment due to the increased cost of steel.
"All of our shoring systems are made from engineered steel, and steel is so expensive that the cost has almost doubled in 18 months," Buck said. "The price has gone from about 32 cents a pound to 72 cents a pound. This makes companies less likely to purchase and more likely to rent. Eighty-five percent of our business is rental — 10 percent up from last year because of steel prices being so high."
Buck said slide rail rentals have become more popular in New England through education, demand and salesmanship.
"Since 2007 we have seen a 15-percent growth in inside rail growth, but every year is a little bit different," Buck said. "We have done a lot of linear jobs — long linear trenches. We have a tendency to fall a year behind the economy trends because the jobs are all bought and paid for in advance."
So, with the slide rail business going strong, it is no surprise that Buck's team is on site at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center and Medical School in Worcester, MA.
At the site, contractors are installing a utility tunnel — 800-feet long, 16-feet wide and averaging 4 to 7 feet tall. The purpose of the tunnel is to install steam lines and chiller lines — just basic utility electrical, according to Job Superintendent Alex Haney. Haney, who is working for W.L. French, said French has been on site since the project began in the fall of 2008.
Because the team can only install 200 feet at a time, the UMass project will be completed in six phases:
Phase one will complete the a corner of the campus and the tunnel; phase two will cross the pedestrian road that leads into the main entrance to the hospital; phase three will go through the valet parking area and into a quad area; phase four will connect to an existing tunnel; phase five will complete the area behind the Benedict building: and phase six ties into the emergency room.
Haney said that installing new pipes is "something that the hospital feels will be better maintenance down the road. They also have to tie two buildings together — the medical school and Benedict building."
On the site, W.L. French is in the process of putting in a Slide Rail System that the company purchased from United Rentals in Shrewsbury for about a half-million dollars, according to United Rentals Slide Rail Consultant, Al MacKenzie.
"They basically bought 200 linear feet of slide rail," MacKenzie said. "Normally we don't sell these, we rent them. They are very expensive."
MacKenzie explained that the E&S Slide Rail System (named for Emunds & Staudinger — a German company) is basically another way to shore.
"When you build it you start with the upper panel, which is the outer panel," MacKenzie said. "Then you pre-dig the hole. Then lay the outer panel against the wall and put dirt in front and behind to stabilize it. Then drop the corner rail and drop another rail on the outer part down the rail into the ground."
One benefit of using the slide rail method is that laborers can move two-thirds less material out of excavation.
"Operators can run into sandy or C80 (wet) materials, and the shoring system keeps materials from moving," MacKenzie said. "We call it a tight system — digging straight and holding everything else. We can dig along water lines and gas lines without collapsing the lines."
Another advantage of the slide rail system is that the panels can be different sizes and have some give.
"When the excavator is digging out the hole, dirt and rocks can fall down and out of the way of the work," MacKenzie said.
During phase one, the first hole constructed with the slide rail system is 16 feet deep and shoring is 16 by 20 by 60 feet long.
"We dig the hole and set precast in with a crane," Haney said. "Then we backfill up to the top of the tunnel segment. Then Lynch puts in mechanical pipe and does all the welding in the tunnel. Once that's completed, we cap it. Then we backfill and put in all the utilities and relocate back to where they were originally."
Haney said the job at UMass will cost about $3.5 million. The job will be completed in November 2009
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