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There is currently only the one project underway in the Whonnock office, and that is the Cerro Verde Sulfide Project, which we are detailing for Schuff Steel.

This project is located in Peru, being engineered by Fluor here in Vancouver, with connection design responsibilities falling to our friends at Structural Consultants Incorporated. As I anticipated at the outset of the job, the cooperation between all parties is making this a most enjoyable project to be involved with.

Although Schuff Steel is our client, they are not actually fabricating any of the steel themselves. They are having it done by a number of different fabricators in both Peru and North America.

This approach presents a huge logistical challenge, with Schuff  purchasing steel from various locations and then having it delivered to the correct shop in time for fabrication and then, in the case of North American fabrication, having it shipped to the port for transporting to Peru; all the while maintaining a schedule that is extremely onerous.

Fluor has encountered some problems with equipment procurement and site conditions that occasionally impact their ability to complete the design information, which in turn affects both Dowco and SCI.

We in turn have our own difficulties, insofar as the project is broken down into 12 separate structures, 12 conveyor systems and approximately 60 sequences, being detailed between the Whonnock and Burnaby offices, and ultimately fabricated at various shops. Some of the drawings remain in metric units and some have to be converted to imperial units.

Despite this, the various Dowco Project teams are doing an admirable job of maintaining control of their own specific areas and making my role easy, and for this they have my heartfelt thanks.

Project Report, Burnaby Office
Rick Station

The Phoenix Convention Center for Havens Steel Inc. is now complete. Thanks again for the tremendous effort put in from our team headed up by Woytek Jablkowski and Nick Rakic. This was a very demanding Project which has finally come to a successful conclusion.

The North Shore Hebrew Academy from Super Metal headed by Joe McDonald’s crew is also now complete. It has been a pleasure working with Super Metal and we hope we can work together on future Projects.

Doug McGillvray’s team is still wading through mountains of revisions on the Valley Metro Rail Buildings for Hirschfeld Steel. This has been a long and tedious process which they are performing extremely well considering the constant changes  being made.

A good part of the Cerro Verdi Project for Schuff Steel is still being detailed in the Burnaby office. The Sanjay Prasad and Tony Han  crew is just finishing up the  Grinding Building.  The Joe McDonald and Nick Rakic crew is halfway through the Tertiary Building and Steven Chang is heading up a team working on all the conveyors. This is going very well. It sure is nice working on another Fluor Project again.

Qualcomm Building ‘N’ (which is the second Building on the Project we are doing for Schuff Steel-West Coast) is finally getting some answers to all the RFIs being generated. Allan Gliege’s crew looks like they will complete the Auditorium portion by mid August, leaving only the Lobby to finish.

We have also been creating a model for the Citi Bank Project in Long Island, NY for WSP Cantor Seinuk Structural Engineers. This Project is in its final stages with a few minor revisions still to come. It has been an enjoyable experience working closely with the Cantor’s Engineers in creating the model.

Dowco has just been awarded the Vancouver Convention Center from Canron. This is a 18,700 Ton Project which will take us into next summer to complete. We will be gearing up in the next couple of weeks and are looking forward to the new challenges this Project has to offer.

Project Report, Toronto Office
Eric Lee

We continue to struggle with both the quality and integrity of structural design drawings that consistently fall short of industry standards as developed by AISC and CISC .  We attempt to rectify these situations by sending multiple RFIs to clarify issues, and get hammered with bulletins in return, to cover the updates and ongoing revisions to projects.     Despite the extraordinary high number of changes, we strive very hard to continue to maintain support to the fabricators.

A good example is a project begun in April, when we anticipated the job would be finished in 16 weeks.  Four months (16 weeks) later, we are still struggling to issue shop drawings for the first area.   Many thanks to Paul Ledsham, our new Project Manager, who has handled this project with extreme care and attention and we are confident this project will be finished before the end of the year (approximately 32 weeks duration, ie completion 16 weeks later than originally scheduled).

One Bryant Park, started in January has also been challenging with continued CCP changes from the customer.  The number of change orders has gone beyond 100 and are still coming in, and extensive rework to the lower tower has been going on for the past two months.

Oregon Clinic for Fought & Company and HDD Expansion for Dave Steel Company, Inc. are into their final stages and we expect to finish before the end of August. We have finally completed several jobs begun last year for Helmark, George Steel and Canron.