Automated urban excavation monitoring

Upon completion, The One tower in Toronto will be Canada’s tallest skyscraper. It will be the first high-rise in Toronto to be built with a hybrid exoskeleton support system, and the highest-capacity crane ever used in the city was brought in to install its foundation. Mizrahi Developers has called on cutting-edge technology to meet the special challenges posed by this project, and the geotechnical monitoring was no exception.

With the surrounding Yorkville neighbourhood boasting the highest commercial rents in Canada and a designated heritage building abutting the site’s east side, the developer did not always have the luxury of positioning equipment in the most convenient way, nor could they afford to wait until ground stability problems became apparent to intervene. Assuring the stability of the temporary shoring system was essential to keeping the excavation work safe. They needed to adopt a proactive risk management strategy to protect the construction site and avoid damaging adjacent structures, all while conforming to the location’s small footprint and dense urban environment.

To meet these requirements, Monir Precision Monitoring used SAAV model ShapeArray™ to measure ground movement within sheet pile walls. ShapeArray was paired with a sensemetrics’ Thread to provide near real-time data to the construction team. sensemetrics’ software offers plug-and-play compatibility with ShapeArray and a secure cloud platform that members of the project design and construction teams could access from mobile devices or desktops computers for up-to-date analytics, alerting, and automated report distribution. According to sensemetrics’, using this integrated automated data collection system, rather than a more conventional system of inclinometers read manually by field crews once a week, delivered a 60% reduction in cost and produced data 87% more likely to detect a critical displacement within 24 hours.

Read more about this project in One Big Responsibility at Pilling Canada

References

[1] Landau, J. “The One’s hybrid exoskeleton to be a first for Toronto,” Urban Toronto. https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2018/02/ones-hybrid-exoskeleton-be-first-toronto [February 12, 2018]

[2] Landau, J. “Specialized crane installed for ‘The One’ at Bloor and Yonge,” Urban Toronto. https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2018/11/specialized-crane-installed-one-bloor-and-yonge [November 14, 2018]