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It is always welcome news in the city of Toronto and the province of Ontario when a major construction project finishes 18 months AHEAD of schedule. That is what consulting engineering firm Entuitive contributed to with its role as Construction Engineer on Gardiner Expressway Section 2 (from Dufferin Street to Strachan Avenue) Rehabilitation work, for which it received an Award of Distinction as part of the Ontario Engineering Project Awards this year.
Any work on the Gardiner is the ‘third rail’ of Toronto construction as you certainly cannot just close a major expressway and backbone of city life and mobility which handles 140,000 vehicles every weekday. Add to that the intensity of traditional media, online social media and general public scrutiny – and any time construction is undertaken on this major arterial roadway, one of the five busiest highways in Canada, you are under an immediate microscope.
“It is always important to be responsive and collaborative when working with contractors to ensure operations move smoothly on-site, but it is correct to say the intense scrutiny on this project made responding to the contractor’s needs in a timely manner imperative,” says Jason Jelinek, Principal in Entuitive’s Transportation Group. “As the project entered into its accelerated schedule, keeping up with the pace of the work and providing our drawings and analysis to allow the contractor to achieve their target schedule was critical. This sometimes meant extra pressure and long hours, but being a part of this amazing achievement is something we are very proud of.”
Entuitive’s participation in this project came after the Design-Build contract by the City of Toronto was awarded to Grascan Construction. Torbridge Construction, a sub-contractor, then retained Entuitive to provide construction engineering services for the demolition and reconstruction of this Section 2 portion of the expressway. Having been supplying specialized construction engineering services in partnership with bridge contractors for many years made the selection of Entuitive and its outstanding reputation for completing construction engineering on many highly complex projects a natural choice.
Originally based in Toronto and Calgary in 2011, Entuitive today has more than 350 employees in five offices in Canada. The award-winning consulting engineering firm works with an international client base delivering consulting services across hundreds of projects in the commercial, institutional, transportation, healthcare, cultural, sports and residential sectors.
Entuitive’s construction engineering solutions on the Gardiner Expressway project facilitated a sequential approach that always kept four lanes open to traffic as construction only took place on two lanes at a time.
“This section of the Gardiner, unlike the rest of the expressway, has a sub-structure configuration that includes concrete piers (supports) in 24 locations that are shaped like two 'T’s' sitting side by side,” explains Jelinek. “In order to maintain four lanes of traffic throughout the reconstruction project, the bridge deck, girders and the top of those 'T’s' had to be removed and replaced one-third of the time. This was further complicated by the fact that the height of each of the concrete piers increases at each location as the expressway raises in elevation from west to east.”
Originally opened in 1958, the majority of this particular area of the Gardiner was originally built with cast-in-place, concrete T-beams and integral bents, owing to its original design concepts of seventy years ago, but also resulted in salt-laden water infiltrating the joints causing extensive deterioration and the potential for instability during the demolition process. You can only imagine the thousands of tons of salt which have been poured on the Gardiner over the course of 68 winters.
Vital highways throughout Toronto and Ontario must remain safe, reliable, toll-free and in good repair, a point of emphasis earlier this month with the announcement that the province will upload ownership and maintenance of both the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway (DVP) effective fall 2027. To support the transfer of both the Gardiner and DVP to provincial ownership, Ontario is providing up to $353 million to the City of Toronto to continue operating and maintaining both highways until the transfer is complete.
The solutions brought forward to the Section 2 Rehabilitation by Entuitive contributed to a process which allowed construction to finish 18 months ahead of schedule. “The structural design concept was intentionally minimalistic, without sacrificing performance, resulting in easy-to-implement solutions,” says Jelinek. “The amount of instruction that had to be provided to construction foremen and jacking operators was significantly reduced. Simplified procedures enable consistency and lowered the likelihood of deviations by avoiding complex connection details and establishing repeatable processes that aided in the ability of the Design-Builder to meet their accelerated schedule goals.”
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