City: Boston
State: Massachusetts
Owner: Horizons Watermark, LLC
General Contractor: Commodore Builders

Project Description:

The development at 1785 Columbus Avenue in Boston is a seven-story, 139,200 square foot building primarily to be occupied by Horizons for Homeless Children, a non-profit organization that focuses on helping young children cope with the trauma and stress associated with homelessness by providing early education and family support services. Schnabel was hired to perform underpinning of an existing adjacent building to allow for the excavation for the new building.

During the pre-bid stage, we were asked to provide traditional hand-dug pit underpinning for the support of the adjacent building. We proposed to support the building using our now patented Soil Mix Pier Underpinning (SMPU) in lieu of traditional pit underpinning due to cost savings, schedule savings, and an inherent safer installation due to not having to place workers underneath the footing. Using our new SMPU method, around 131 cubic yards of soil mix piers were installed and saved the project an estimated 7 weeks of schedule compared to traditional hand-dug underpinning techniques. The work was successfully completed on time without any settlement of the underpinned structure.