Innovation - SUPERSTRUCTURES

Innovation

The “Gold Standard”

I see 10 sets [of drawings] a week from the best firms in NYC and your office continues to be the Gold Standard. Your docs are by far the best in the industry, by a good margin.”

– M.H.- President of one of NYC’s premier exterior restoration contractors.

Construction documents comprise the design professional’s detailed instructions to the contractor who is performing the remediation work.

Our construction documents employ a disciplined system that’s unique in the profession.

Restoration Assembly Detail (RAD) markers that indicate the type and extent of work are keyed to a RAD detail drawing that calls out the products and materials to be used. Specifications further define our requirements and are tightly coordinated with our RADs.

Construction Documentation / RAD Tags

As a practical matter, we don’t want to be surprised by a problem while standing on a rig with the contractor, midway through the job. Our disciplined embrace of the “five Cs” of construction documents—correct, complete, clear, concise, and consistent—saves time and money. We’ve completed numerous complex restoration projects with change orders of 3% or less.

Trust . . . but verify. Within our disciplined system, each RAD instance carries a unique identifier that allows that item to be tracked–enabling us to continuously monitor the quality of the contractor’s performance and the progress of the work.

Superstructures Tech

Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

We relentlessly seek out and apply cutting-edge materials, methods, and technologies on behalf of our clients and projects, including: digital asset management, documentation, and reporting; non-destructive testing; techniques of facade access; structural health monitoring; and reality capture.

Giga-Pixel – Coping Inspection

We’ve implemented a novel, proprietary inspection technique called SurfaceCapture^SM, in which hundreds of photographs are digitally stitched together to create a composite, high-definition image, allowing us to zoom in to view detail measured in fractions of an inch.

We’ve developed our proprietary Asset Information Management (AIM) system—where remediation must be accomplished and tracked at thousands of discrete locations.

Asset Information Management

Our entire office uses the latest non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDTE) techniques and equipment for investigation and quality assurance.

We’ve built an entire website devoted to NDTE: www.superstructures-te.com

CDs that set the standard

If you get it right on paper, it’ll be right when you build it.”

– The Wright Brothers

Roofs

Roofs rarely leak in the field of the membrane. They fail where the membrane intersects a parapet wall, is penetrated by a roof drain, or terminates at a door saddle. That’s why our drawings for roof restoration projects contain pages and pages of details anticipating these conditions.

Masonry

Masonry restoration over flat, continuous regions of wall is relatively straightforward. Restoration becomes more challenging where a masonry wall turns a corner, is supported by a steel member, or is interrupted by a window. That’s why our restoration drawings, even for the facade of a fairly conventional postwar apartment building, contain pages and pages of details anticipating these conditions.

Curtain Walls

Replacement of curtain wall sealant involves more than squeezing a consistent bead from a caulking gun. That’s why our curtain wall restoration drawings for the project excerpted below contain a dozen separate details describing various conditions of sealant and substrate.