Civil Engineering Photos

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen here on the left hand side of the picture above is a heavy lift crane hoisting large steel frames from the position on the ground where they were assembled onto the top lip of California Stadium in Berkeley, California. These steel frames eventually became the luxury and press boxes of the renovated stadium. Using heavy lift cranes comes at a high cost due to several reasons, one being that the crane must be trucked to the site in many pieces and assembled specifically for the lift. Often the assembly alone requires several smaller cranes in itself. As such, designers and construction workers try to make structures that can be built without the use of this type of specialized equipment. The tradeoff here making it worth the use, however, was that steel workers were able to build the frames on the ground leading to benefits that outweighed the cost and hassle of using a heavy lift crane.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Pictured above is a custom built crane barge called the Left Coast Lifter. It was originally built to assist in the construction of the Bay Bridge East Span replacement connecting Oakland, California and San Francisco, California. The Bay Bridge East span project was completed in September 2013 and the Left Coast Lifter was transported via the Panama Canal to New York State for use on the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge project over the Hudson River.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen here is the demolition of Campbell Hall on The University of California – Berkeley campus. Three machines are being used for this activity: a man lift, a traditional excavator, and an ultra high demolition excavator. Demolition of a building in this setting is high risk due to the possibility of debris falling out of the site boundaries. In order to minimize this possibility, great care is taken by the operator of the ultra high demolition excavator. Also, dust generated by the demolition is unacceptable in an environment like a college campus. Therefore on this project three fire hoses are used from varying angles to keep the dust in control.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

The yellow piece of equipment seen above is called a bay crane. Bay cranes are used in factories and warehouses because they allow for access to the entire floor area of a facility by one machine. Bay cranes work by rolling along the tracks placed along the side of the room for access to the entire room’s length. They then have a separate roller and track system that allow for access across the width of the room located on the carriage that travels on the previously mentioned tracks. Cranes of this design can range in capacity from several hundred pounds to many tons depending on the needs of the facility the crane serves.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen above is a tractor with a jackhammer attachment on its boom. This type of setup is common for small road construction jobs throughout the United States where portability and more power than a simple hand held unit can provide are needed. This jackhammer is breaking up the concrete around an old manhole cover that is being replaced.

Photo Credit: Zephaniah Varley

Seen here is a machine called a roadheader excavating the 4th bore of the Caldecott tunnel near Oakland, California being built by Parsons Brinckerhoff of Antioch, California. A roadheader is a machine with a rotating cutter head that is mounted on a boom and moved around to eat through the rock in front of the machine. A loading device on the front of the machine then gathers the cut rock bits, called spoil, onto a conveyer belt to be moved out of the tunnel for disposal.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen above is a massive mobile hydraulic crane fitted with a jib. Cranes like this are advantageous because they can be setup and taken down with relative ease, and have large lifting capacities. The jib on this crane allows it to reach far over objects, like the store front in this photo, and access the back of the building far from any open space where a crane can be set up. This allows the workers to position objects, like air conditioning units, on a roof that would otherwise be inaccessible by a crane without a jib attached.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen above is the storage lot of a perforated, corrugated pipe manufacturer in Illinois. For scale purposed the human subject was asked to stand in the photograph. As can be deduced from the scale, the coils of pipe are hundreds of feet long. Pipe like this is used in drainage applications around building foundations, behind retaining walls, and generally anywhere water is present and needs to be directed for proper drainage. Perforated, corrugated pipe is a relatively cheap product, but if not used can result in very expensive water damage.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

This is a typically sized excavator that can be seen at construction sites across the world. It is an extremely versatile machine and can be used for many tasks including digging, loading, or in this case jack hammering. This particular attachment at the end of the boom is a jack hammer that is powered through the unit’s hydraulic system. The jack hammer can break through concrete with relative ease and transform large structural components into smaller manageable pieces for the purpose of material handling during a demolition operation.