Liftech hosted 35 engineering students from Stuttgart University in Germany on October 12, 2010. The students toured the Bay Area’s unique structures and various construction sites giving the students an introduction to a wide-range of civil engineering topics. Their tour included trips to the Golden Gate Bridge, the construction sites of the new Caldecott Tunnel and the new East Bay span…
New Crane Arrives at Dutch Harbor
High winds caused the dockside crane at the APL Dutch Harbor terminal in Alaska to collapse in December 2009 and a replacement crane was required. The best option for APL was to modify and transport a late 1980’s vintage MES post-Panamax crane with articulating boom from APL’s Kaohsiung, Taiwan, terminal to Dutch Harbor. The wharf was also modified to suit…
Liftech Softball Season Recap
Our 2010 softball team set Liftech records for wins and winning percentage! This was the first season in which we finished 0.500. We finished 4-4 and took third in our league. We also beat the eventual division champion (Parsons) in our next to last game to give them their first loss of the season. Overall, our defense struggled at times,…
Liftech Wins Award for Bay Bridge Floating Crane Project
Liftech received an Award of Excellence from the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC) in recognition of our engineering work on the 1700 t floating crane, also known as the Left Coast Lifter. The Left Coast Lifter is a barge-mounted crane designed to erect the major components of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge self-anchored suspension span. The crane was…
High Performance Pile Connections
A damaged pier at McNears Beach Park in Marin, California, was repaired by replacing portions with new structure. The new structure was designed to meet current seismic design criteria. This required a high performance pile-to-pile cap connection. The high performance connection was designed using a fiber reinforced bearing pad, isolating the sides of the embedded pile, and unbonding the dowels…
Liftech Engineers Venture Out of the Office to Visit Pacific Steel Casting Company
Pacific Steel Casting Company (Pacific Steel) graciously opened its doors yesterday for Liftech engineers to tour their Berkeley steel foundry. The tour was guided by some highly experienced Pacific Steel employees, including the president, Joe Emmerichs, and a knowledgeable technical sales representative, Dave Standafer. The tour began at the technology center, where we learned how computers help determine the optimum…
Crane and Wharf Damage Assessment
Following are Feroze Vazifdar’s first hand observations of the damage to the major terminals in Chile, supported by local consultants’ preliminary reports. San Antonio San Antonio has seven berths with six ship-to-shore gantry cranes. Two of these cranes were damaged due to ship collisions. Another crane was derailed, but has no significant structural damage, and was placed back on the…
Feroze Vazifdar’s Firsthand Account of the Earthquake in Chile
The drive into San Antonio took almost two hours, with stop and go traffic over several damaged bridges. Along the way we noticed a few damaged canopies, one major landslide, and damage to a newly built casino. San Antonio is a very quaint town with only a few high-rise structures. A five-story building with a lower soft story suffered significant…
The Earthquake in Chile
Crane and Wharf Performance in the Earthquake in Chile Liftech is communicating with a local structural consultant and terminal operators regarding the damage assessment of the cranes and the wharves. Preliminary reports indicate that the container cranes that were designed to the modern seismic codes at the two container terminals in the Valparaiso region performed well, and some wharves sustained…
Liftech Engineers Teach Local High School Students about Engineering
Liftech engineers Derrick Lind and Anna Dix taught at the Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) this year in association with the Engineers Alliance for the Arts (EAA). As part of EAA’s student impact project, local professional engineers visit classrooms to teach students about bridges. The focus of the six week curriculum is for students to learn about basic engineering…