No one fell into the river this week, thank goodness! Working on a roof top is no easy task. The construction workers pulled no stops when it came to safety; they wore secured lifelines!

Perhaps you caught sight of the bright orange crane, caution tape around the dryer shed, high visibility-vested men on the catwalk and smelled fresh cut lumber around the Cannery this week? For those of you just tuning in, the Cannery is undergoing construction from now until the end of April 2013.

This week, Seismic 2000, the company working on the project, focused on the daunting task of deconstructing the decomposing catwalk on the dryer shed roof. To do this, they had to build scaffolding to work on. This alone is no ordinary process as they have to respect the building’s heritage status. For example, to build the scaffolding, they could not make any new holes in the roof. So how does one secure scaffolding onto a rooftop (high above the Fraser River, I might add) without making new holes with screws?  The workers have to  make use of what is already there. They unscrewed existing screws, laid down a layer of foam against the roof tiles (to protect the roof and to stabilize the structure), then they placed the wood supports and secured them down using the same original screw holes.

The above photos show the step-by-step process: starting with fresh lumber and secured lifelines, then building the supports and scaffolding (with a little help from the crane), deconstructing the original catwalk and exposing the ruined roof caps (which will need to be replaced), and leaving room for a new catwalk to be built.

Before this, the dryer shed catwalk was deteriorating. Once the new catwalk is in place, I am sure we will all be a little tempted to do a little dance on the catwalk!

Posted by websitedev

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