Project Highlight: Condition Monitoring for Historic Building

A historic brick building in Boston dating back to the late 1800’s, was in need of foundation repairs as part of a larger renovation effort. As part of the renovation, the foundation system required underpinning to stabilize the historic structure while subsequent improvements were made. To ensure the safety of the construction crew and preserve the integrity of the structure, a monitoring program was designed and implemented during construction activities.

GZA selected sensemetrics as the Infrastructure IoT platform to provide real time access to deformation data using four Leica Automated Motorized Total Stations (AMTS), directly connected to our Broadband Thread connectivity device. The Thread also acts as a gateway to send all data securely to sensemetrics’ cloud applications where GZA developed project-specific Map views, Graphs, Automated Reporting, and Alerts, set to appropriate threshold values which trigger notifications if and when exceeded. 

While GZA monitored the building’s movement on the sensemetrics application, they noticed a trend in select prism data that exceeded project thresholds on one of the walls. Brendon Murphy, Assistant Project Manager at GZA commented, “We observed 1.5 inches of settlement on one of the walls which is consistent with our findings in the field and with our crack gauges. All of this movement occurred in the last 12-24 hours. Thanks to our visual findings and the automated data from the AMTS units, the building was safely evacuated and crews quickly responded with temporary shoring.”

Our software not only provides valuable insights, it also comes with an expert support team that can assist at any time during a project’s phase. “The sensemetrics support staff is top notch as always. It’s nice to know when a unique situation arises, we can count on the sensemetrics group as a valued team member,” stated by Justin Zarrella, the Senior Project Manager at GZA. As a result of using our connectivity device and software, the on-site team was able to capture building damage and mitigate the risk to both the building and the people inside. 

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