The Omega Morgan team always has a keen eye on two things: safety and efficiency. We never lower our extremely high standards or compromise on safety. But sometimes, a job comes along that has us take our efficiency game to a new level.

Howard S. Wright, a construction company based out of Portland and Seattle, needed assistance with a parking garage in downtown Portland after rioters caused damage to the structure’s second story. They gave Omega Morgan’s Portland-based machinery moving specialists a call to help them engineer and execute a solution: the garage’s concrete girders needed to be lifted in order to replace the damaged bearing pads between the girders and corbels they rested on.

Our industrial machinery movers were more than happy to assist. Two locations would need bearing pad replacement, and we scheduled each to be done in two separate mobilizations. The job would have to be completed overnight so the owner of the garage could still remain open for business during the day.

The Task: Fabricate and Mobilize

Our team was first tasked to engineer and fabricate a steel base for the lower level to spread out the weight of the load. Our crew also mobilized all of the equipment–including the steel base, our 100-ton jacking system, ekki blocks and elephant stands–to downtown Portland.

Once there, the crew unloaded everything into the street, moved the equipment into the garage, and set themselves up for the jacking operation. It would be a delicate operation, to be sure. Our crew used their years of extensive expertise, ingenuity and some good, old fashioned know-how to specifically engineer a process that would prevent and protect against damage to the upper floors of the garage.

A Delicate Job Done in Half the Time

When they were ready, the crew lifted the concrete girders using our 100-ton jacking system. Applying 400,000 pounds of pressure, they lifted the girders high enough to facilitate the replacement of the bearing pads. This part of the job needed to be done with a lot of care and caution; if the crews overpressed the jacks–even by one inch–there was a real chance the concrete deck above would get cracked. The engineering solution our crews created helped to direct the exact placement of the jacks so they could alleviate the pressure on the beams and remove the bearing pads for replacement. Our team executed flawlessly and the replacement went off without a hitch.

Our machinery moving crew was able to execute this effort so efficiently that while we had scheduled for two mobilizations, our crew only needed one. The single mobilization over the course of one evening helped save our client precious time and we’re proud of our machinery moving team for doing the job with the uncompromising safety and quality that Omega Morgan is known for.

We’re happy to have been able to assist Howard S. Wright on this project, and we’re glad to report that they’re more than satisfied with the job well done.