LYNN — The Pickering School Building Committee gathered on Zoom Wednesday evening to discuss updates on the stages of construction for the school project. But Brendan Moseley from Consigli Construction guided committee members through issues that have arisen with the ground improvement installations.
“We did mobilize ground improvements the week before Christmas, installed about 420 shallow slab wraps that are about seven-to-ten feet deep throughout the full footprint of the building,” Moseley said. “On Jan. 7, we began the install of some of our deeper elements of the exterior foundation wall closest to the existing school.”
But Moseley said that they received notice from the school regarding “visible cracks in walls and issues with some of the doors working” in the building as it currently stands. They paused their work immediately and brought in the project’s structural engineer, who walked through the existing building to make sure everything was safe, he said.
The engineer gave the building the “okay,” adding that the cracks appeared to be cosmetic rather than signs of structural damage.
But school employees raised concerns. On Wednesday, Moseley reported, “it appears that there were some issues with the vibrations from the deeper rig that may be doing something with the deeper soils around the building and the vibrations of that rig that caused those issues in the existing school.” Moseley added the ground improvement installations have been paused due to this issue.
“The design team is working through some alternate paths, with the goal of not causing any further damage to that existing building while making sure that we can still safely install on the sight,” he said.
Moseley said the design team plans to have some solutions prepared by Thursday. “We’re going to work through those with the entire project team, our sub-contractors that are involved, so we can start looking at what that alternate pathway is,” he said.
At that point the team can start looking at what the overall project construction schedule will look like, Moseley said.
