Walsh Construction US Cellular Field, Chicago, IL

This offseason, Walsh Construction built a major renovation at US Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox. Much of the stadium’s parking is located across the street north of the stadium, and a bridge over the street provides the walkway into the stadium. This bridge and its tower were renovated and expanded during the offseason, with several new structures being built and many changes being made to previously existing buildings. These changes required many pieces of structural steel to be attached to existing beams and columns to reinforce them for the additional load. This required hundreds of holes to be drilled into the beams to set anchors and through-bolts.

In order to drill so many holes into the columns and beams, the rebar would need to be located inside the concrete. Walsh brought in GPRS to scan the faces of the beams wherever steel was to be attached and mark the locations of all the rebar. Over the course of several weeks, GPRS technicians Nathan Machel, Nate Kollar, and Bryan Vickers provided rebar locations and other critical information which allowed the structural steel to be placed and this project to be completed successfully.

Nathan Machel is the manager for GPRS operations in the Chicago Region. He is based in Chicago, IL and he can be reached at 847-514-2277 or by email at nathan.machel@gp-radar.com. The GPR technicians at GPRS perform a variety of services including utility location, UST detection, and concrete scanning to locate rebar, conduits, and post-tensioned cables.

GPRS technician Nate Kollar scans a beam at 72’ elevation to locate and mark the rebar. Structural steel was to be attached along that side of the beam, and many anchors would be set. By marking the rebar, the holes for the anchors could be drilled without hitting any rebar.

One of the structures that was renovated at US Cellular Field. GPRS scanned many areas on all the beams and columns to locate rebar and allow holes to be drilled to attach structural steel.