Crew at Thompson Metal Fab in Vancouver worked
long hours to keep tram construction on schedule
Sheet Metal
Workers had
crucial role
in building
aerial tram
b h
m k
Bennett Hartman
Morris & Kaplan, llp
Attorneys at Law
Months before the Portland Aerial
Tram became visible from Interstate 5, a
100-person crew in Vancouver, Wash.,
was working around the clock fabricating
the steel components for the upper station
tower at Oregon Health and Science Uni-
versity and the intermediate tower located
off SW Macadam Ave., in Portland.
That work crew represented some of
the finest craftsmen and women at Sheet
Metal Workers Local 16 — all of them
employees at Thompson Metal Fab Inc.
Thompson played a somewhat unusual
role as general contractor for both the fabri-
cation and erection work. The company
subcontracted the actual building of the
towers to Carr Construction. (An article fea-
turing the topping out of the upper station
tower by members of Iron Workers Local
29 at Carr Construction was featured in the
Sept. 15 issue of the NW Labor Press.)
“For the most part, fabrication went
very well. Our guys did an outstanding job.
There were very few glitches,” said John
Rudi, president of Thompson Metal.
Design changes and coordination prob-
lems early on had put the tram project five
weeks behind schedule. Once those issues
were worked out, Thompson’s crew was
able to make up ground so that by the time
the upper station was topped out on Aug.
31, it was back on schedule for a ten-
tative opening on Dec. 15.
The 196-foot intermediate tower
(pictured above left) was built in
three pieces — each with a complex
series of welding challenges — the
largest of which was the foot, meas-
uring 90 feet long by 33 feet wide at
the bottom and weighing 130 tons.
As the Daily Journal of Commerce noted,
“The tower was built of five-eighths-inch
plate steel with T-stiffeners attached inside
to resist the heavy twisting loads that the
tram will exert. Full penetration welds
were used wherever the pieces of steel
were spliced together.”
The upper station tower (pictured
above) was even more complex, featuring
four tiers and a steel superstructure on top.
The footing required 78 drilled shafts av-
eraging 70 feet long each and 1,500 cubic
yards of concrete.
“It was a difficult fabrication project,”
Rudi told the NW Labor Press. “It was
very thick steel with a lot of heat input. It
required a lot of skill to hold the toler-
ances. There wasn’t a lot of room to make
adjustments in the field. Our guys had to
make it right in the shop.”
Curtis Anderson, field operations man-
ager for Carr Construction, said the inter-
mediate tower had to be within one inch
of plumb. “We came in at a quarter-inch. I
can’t say enough good things about the
fabrication work.”
Mike Mayes, president of Mayes Test-
ing Engineers, told the DJC that the tram
project is one that “people swell up with
pride thinking they were even involved.
Portland doesn’t have an icon. I think this
is going to be it.”
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