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Walked a half-built parking garage in Nashville and I'm still mad about the beam pockets
I was in Nashville last week doing a walkthrough on a 6 level parking garage that's about 60 percent framed, and I could not stop staring at the beam pockets. The precast guy on site told me they were "close enough" and pointed at a gap I could slide my hand into, maybe a half inch out of square on a 30 foot span. Here's my take, and I know it'll rub some people the wrong way: tolerances on embeds and pockets are where cheap work hides, because nobody sees it once the deck goes down. I've watched two garages in the last year come back for rework on bearing pads, and both times the fix cost more than doing it right the first time by a mile. The foreman kept saying the engineer signed off, but signing off on a drawing is not the same as standing on level 4 looking at shims stacked three deep. If your crew is shimming more than an inch to make bearing, that's not a tolerance issue, that's a layout issue and it started weeks before the beams ever showed up. So what do you all do, do you call it out and slow the crane down, or document it and let the next guy deal with it?
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wright.jesse21d ago
A half inch out of square on a 30 foot span is nothing, that's within AASHTO and PCI bearing tolerance and the bearing pad is designed to take that. I've set thousands of pieces and 3 deep shims on level 4 just means the erector read the survey, not that anybody did bad work. Save the fight for the cross slopes and drainage, that's where garages actually come back on you.
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