United Grain – Structural Steel Design
Vancouver, WA

The structural steel fabrications typically found in large grain transfer and storage facilities usually consist of pre-engineered simple towers and conveyor bridges. This steel structure for United Grain in Vancouver, WA was anything but typical. High seismic design forces combined with base elevations on top of 140 foot tall concrete structures and a 300 foot long double bridge combining the two steel towers made for challenging designs. The steel bridges had to be fixed to one tower and be able to move on the other and also had to be lifted into place while eight rail lines were temporarily shut down. Tight tolerances combined with careful surveying with double and triple checking enabled both sections of bridges to be placed in one day.