Dig To Done: The Crane Is Up
By Lucas on Jun 03, 2013
The crane is up at Lindvest’s B.streets, which means that we needed to make a visit up to Bloor and Bathurst for the second installment of our ‘Dig-to-Done’ series! One of the biggest milestones a condominium reaches is the installation of a crane. It signifies the commencement of the rising, and it gets both purchasers and locals excited about the future.
Once again, we had the opportunity to speak with project manager Chris Hawkins, who gave us the rundown on what has happened since our last visit, and what we should see soon.
“We now have the crane up and we are starting to see some real progress on the site. As you can see, the onsite electrical is present, which now allows us to start pushing forward,” Hawkins said.
“On Monday, we are planning to start putting in footings and start the concrete work. The concrete company that we are bringing in is under contract to be done all concrete work in 10 months. That includes lost time through the winter. We took the standard Toronto weather, and agreed to allow for 30 days of lost time in the winter. Anything more than that, he will put in overtime to pick it up, so we are fairly confident that we’ll move along well. If it’s a good winter, he can pick up some time.”
Oh, the winter! A touchy time for condo construction. The unpredictable winters in Toronto make it nearly impossible to plan for the future, let alone setting a strict deadline.
“It all depends on what we are doing. Last year, we had some hits and misses. One site that I manage was starting the excavation. Excavation is usually good in the beginning of January; because of the cold, the dump sites are solid and it’s easy to move the machines around on the soil, because its frozen. This past winter, because of the mild weather, we lost 20 days. The land was too soft. Trucks got stuck, dump sites were closed. Now if you were doing something like formwork, then it was a great winter. It all depends on what you are doing. It’s one of those things that’s just out of our control. There are just so many variables.”
And, as Chris went on to mention, it’s important to look at it from a long-term viewpoint, not just in three to six-month pockets.
“I’ve been doing this for upwards of 35 years. I would say really, in the end, it always works out. We look at it in a five-year block, not just a single year.”
