high rise fire

The fire occurred in Grenfell Tower, Kensington, North London, on the 14 June 2017 with London Fire Brigade recording a call at 00:54 and being in attendance 6 minutes later.

The 24 storey building (23 stories above ground) was public housing apartments with some other non-residential accommodation.

200+ firefighters with 40+ appliances attended and carried out multiple rescues of 60+ persons.

Conditions were described as extremely arduous with heavy smoke and heat restricting attempts to proceed upwards in the single staircase building.

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Nvidia Steel Megaframe with triangles everywhere

Devcon Construction has built some of Silicon Valley’s most innovative structures, but its work extends far beyond the tech industry, with a diverse portfolio of nonprofit, institutional and large-scale development projects.

One of Devcon’s most exciting current projects is the $800-million Nvidia corporate campus in Santa Clara, Calif. For the first phase of this project, which was completed in September, Devcon built a complicated, triangular-shaped structure with 500,000 sq ft of below-grade parking and 500,000 sq ft of above-grade office space.

“Normally we build typical rectangular office buildings, but this is a big triangular structure, with a heart shape in the middle and hard cladding that is solid aluminum with perforated panels over a huge, steel megaframe with triangles everywhere,” says Daisy Pereira, Devcon project manager for Nvidia. She says they used Trimble software and BIM extensively to accurately construct the myriad angles on the design-build job.

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Reduce Smoke Inhalation in Hospital Fires

The leading cause of fire fatalities is the inhalation of smoke rather than the fire itself. Fire rated smoke curtains are an excellent way of controlling smoke.

Fire and smoke-rated curtains block smoke from entering hospital rooms by deploying automatically during a fire. Also adding smoke curtains in front of elevators are critical because elevator shafts cause a natural chimney effect, drawing smoke to other floors of the hospital. Therefore a smoke curtain with a 2 hr fire rated elevator door will help create an impenetrable solution.

Helping more patients get the care they need and remain in the hospital instead of being evacuated due to smoke on floors where there is no fire and making the building safer, is one of the key factors of installing fire and smoke rated curtains.

Construction Boom in California

As construction activity in California continues to rise, contractors are riding a tidal wave of plans and projects. The state’s top 75 contractors tallied $36.55 billion of work during 2017, and the top 10 companies alone posted $16.8 billion, a more than 8 increase over the top 10 in the previous year.

“The construction market in California continues to be white hot and extremely active in multiple sectors,” says Rich Henry, president of the Northern Pacific region for McCarthy Building Cos. “The availability of money and the need for investment in infrastructure is still servicing our building boom throughout the state.”

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The Importance of Fire Curtains in Schools

Schools are usually designed to have large, open areas like gymnasiums and cafeterias, which makes protecting the school space difficult. Using fire curtains schools can easily create a safe area within large, open rooms that will create safe passages out of the building for occupants without exposure to fire, smoke, or heat.

Although fire curtains can be placed in a number of different areas, there is a few places within a school that are perfect for durable fire curtains.

The ability to integrate smoke & fire curtains into a school’s fire or smoke alarm system is a huge advantage. Our curtains deploy as soon as smoke sensors are triggered, enabling immediate protection of students and staff, without the chance of human error for releasing the fire curtains manually.

The curtains will still deploy, even during a power outage, due to the backup battery power.

Fire or smoke curtains are some of the most effective means of compartmentalizing an open space.

California and Hawaii Best Projects Competition

The California and Hawaii Best Projects competition showcases a wide range of work that demonstrates design and construction innovation while respecting both the built environment and the natural world. Judges selected 46 projects as winners in 19 categories. Two projects that the jury considered to reflect the pinnacle of achievement were designated Projects of the Year.

This year our panel of industry judges reviewed and discussed nearly 100 projects. Work was evaluated on the ability of the project team to overcome challenges, contribution to the industry and community, safety and construction and design quality. Entries were not accepted for projects that had a construction-related fatality.

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Building Fire Safety

The buildings we live and work in all represent a kind of compromise. We want them to be attractive, comfortable, cost-effective, and energy efficient, but we also want them to be safe. Sometimes those objectives can come into conflict.

Faculty members in WPI’s world-renowned Department of Fire Protection Engineering are recognized experts on a wide range of issues related to fire safety in the built environment. Their research and scholarship has focused on such topics as the fire characteristics of the materials we use to make buildings, the practices we follow to design them, the creation of codes and regulations that guide building fire safety, and the actual performance of buildings in fires.

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Replacing an Iconic Los Angeles Bridge With a ‘Ribbon of Light’

Before the 3,500-ft-long Sixth Street Viaduct got demolished in February 2016, the city of Los Angeles marked its pending demise with a series of free civic events, including live music and a screening of “Grease.” Later, Angelenos took home 1,300 concrete remnants of it as keepsakes, recalls Mary Nemick, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering. “There was a lot of emotional attachment to that viaduct,” she says. “We spent a lot of time talking to the public about why we had to [demolish] it.”

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Car dealership building fire in Santa Clara
California Construction Market Still Sizzles

Construction activity remains red-hot in California and Hawaii, with a wide range of public and private projects. Like last year, the top five projects to break ground in the region during 2017 all topped $1 billion.

The annual ranking features the 28 largest projects to get underway in California and Hawaii during the past year. Collectively, these projects add up to more than $18 billion in revenue.

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