The beams have been installed, ready to put on the zinc panels next week for the roof! This work was done by the family of Henry Sevilla, FAJB scholarship student in Civil Engineering who is doing his internship with our contractor, MultiServicios. Henry's family have a welding shop near the Fundación offices, so they fabricated the plates used to weld the beams in place, and Henry oversaw all the installation.
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A friend brought his drone to the construction site and got some magnificent aerial images. The contractors will begin the installation of the roof soon and we thought the winds would never die down enough to allow for a drone flight! The engineers had a lot of fun watching the drone flight and we love having the aerial photos to compare with the architectural layout.
One of the secrets to the success of the construction project so far is that we have meetings every two weeks to discuss advances and problems. The Supervisor team meets first with Katie Brugger, who is the manager of the project, Alvaro Novoa, Program Director of the Fundación, George Knight, member of the Building Committee, and Germán Sandino, President of the Nicaraguan Board of Directors. After this meeting all participants go to the work site to meet with the contractors.
The communication between all parties has been excellent because of these regularly scheduled meetings. In addition, Luis Mendoza as General Supervisor, prepares a report in advance of each meeting that details the advances and problems encountered, liberally illustrated with photographs, to inform the team and serve as a record of the project. Don Gustavo is known at the worksite as Maestro de las Vigas, or Master of the Beams, because he is in charge of all of the work with the rebar that form the beams and columns. The rebar forms the skeleton of the building, and it is absolutely essential that is is done correctly.
Gustavo was everywhere in the last month – forming the stirrups that hold the rebar in place, ensuring the stirrups were placed in the correct locations along the beams, bending the column ‘feet’ precisely for their attachment to the foundation footers, and constructing the skeletal structure of columns and beams. The winds have been ferocious so we have not been able to get any photos with a drone (we’re still hoping to get that done before the roof goes on). So Engineer Luis Mendoza solved the problem by climbing the mango tree on the property!
Once the walls were up the supervisors could climb to the top and take some photos from that perspective also. The graduates and students who work at the construction site are always happy when Jean Brugger comes on an inspection tour.
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May 2020
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