Bridges & Structures

Ryan Nataluk: You wouldn't just buy a car and never put new tires on it or do an oil change with it. Well bridges and infrastructure, they need their oil changed every once in a while to keep them up and running.

Kip Skabar: A typical bridge inspection is to actually have an engineering judgment according to an established set of criteria In this case, there's over 40 different bridge component types that have to be evaluated. The only way to access some of these components is by industrial rope access in this case

Marie-Andreé Paulhus: When I was studying, I was a rock climber. I didn't know much about “rope access engineer.” they talked to me about they did rope access and I was like, "What? That's amazing. I want to do that."

Niall Eivers: There's a lot of different tasks that's involved, different personnel. We have crews of 8 to 10 people on-site at one time, different types of equipment machinery.

Kip: There's not too many firms out there that actually have that expertise to put engineers up close and personal with cable-stayed structures such as this at high elevations.

Ryan: we're inspectors first and we're climbers second. We use the climbing as a tool to inspect. You need to know material properties of steel, concrete, timber, so you know when they sit in the elements over time, how they deteriorate, and most importantly, how our clients can repair them or protect them. I've climbed many mountains around the world and dropped into a lot of caves. and so Once I learned that I could actually use my skills to perform, use my climbing skills to perform engineering, it was exciting for me.

Kip: By doing an inspection like this, we're actually setting providing a set of baseline data in order to help us better manage the asset over its lifespan. we're following the Ministry standards for bridge inspection in such a way that the condition ratings are applied in a very similar manner by qualified inspectors so that that inspection form can be compared to all the other precedent type of bridge inspections that have been done, and therefore, the end result is much more valuable to the city.

Steve Brown: It was interesting, when we did go out to tender, Stantec were the only ones that actually had climbers onboard. The rest we're going to be doing it by binoculars and by what they called a visual inspection. I think just by having climbers, we're getting a closer inspection, a far greater inspection.

Kip: I’m really excited to bring the team together today and its really rewarding to see everything happening very safely and going off according to our plan. Hopefully you’ll see Stantec inspectors one day hanging off of other cables in the area, and we’ll be doing it safely and we’ll be helping our clients to better manage their structure assets over the entire lifespan of the bridge.