Backbone of steel

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This article was published 09/10/2010 (5715 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

111The steel beams are not made in Canada, which stopped producing wide-flange beams in the early 1990s. The largest support beams — including mammoth 27-tonne vertical supports — are fabricated in Belgium. The other beams are rolled in various U.S. mills and shipped to Walters Inc., a Hamilton steel fabricator.

There, the steel will be cut, shaped, drilled with holes and marked for detailed sequential installation.

Literal description of the beams does not do justice to their sheer size and weight. A metre of the average beam weighs about the same as the average family car. If you laid all the steel members end to end, it would reach all the way from Winnipeg to Portage la Prairie.

It will take more than 10 months to erect the steel, a process that moves with deliberate, glacial pace. Because of the complexity of the concrete work — which involved a series of extremely tall or perilously tilted walls, all held in place with temporary supports — the installation of the steel must proceed deliberately.

Three-dimensional modelling produced by Walters, and vetted by the structural engineers, has created a specific sequence for the removal of temporary super studs that are holding up the concrete walls, and the installation of steel supports. This process of removing just enough of the temporary supports to create room for the steel is one of the more anxious parts of the construction process.

The installation itself is nearly an art form. Many of the steel members arrive slightly longer than needed, and then are cut on site to fit into nodes or connectors. Deciding exactly how much to cut off is a tricky business. When heat is applied to beams as they are welded in place, they expand and then contract and become shorter than the original length. The steelworkers must use nerve and years of experience to estimate the give and take in the installation, so the fit is perfect.