New Campus Center, University of Massachusetts

The University of Massachusetts at Boston has long occupied an area in the city called Columbia Point, site of several housing projects and the University. While Boston is essentially built on landfill - soil and rock was brought in from the west and south of the city in the 1800's to fill in the large tidal basin of salt marshes and fens that form the land we know today, some areas were used as dumping grounds for the city's trash. One of the areas was Columbia Point, which was used as a dump from 1940 - 1960. While the trash settled and gave off its characteristic smell, it eventually settled and digested enough to allow building on the site.

Almost all large buildings in Boston are founded on piles - long concrete, steel or wood (in the old building) posts that are driven into the clays underlying the landscape to support the weight of each building. These piles were essential, as the saturated landfill underlying much of the city simply cannot support the weight of a building on its own. The buildings at Columbia Point were constructed on piles so that further settlement of the underlying trash would not affect the stability of the building.

The first buildings constructed at the University of Massachusetts campus some 20 years ago had unprotected slabs, as it was assumed that the trash had become benign and had ceased to produce noxious gasses. This turned out not to be the case, not just with these buildings, but with many buildings built on former dumps in the Boston area. These buildings were classified as "sick" buildings, with inhabitants complaining of respiratory and other physical distress. Additionally, it was discovered that the gasses from the landfills actually degraded the concrete and reinforcing steel in the slabs that sat directly over the underlying soils.

Because of the settlement of the trash under these buildings, it was proving difficult to provide some type of protection for the concrete and the building itself…some sort of barrier system that would not allow the gasses to penetrate into the slab yet be able to withstand the settlement of the very soils that would support such a barrier.

With the advent of concrete protective liners (CPL), at least the problem of providing something that would remain attached to the underside of the slab was solved. CPL's have integral anchors that lock into the concrete securely and completely, and so the settlement issue was addressed.

When the New Campus Center was being designed, the Architect on the project, Kallman McKinnell and Wood (KMW) hired Haley and Aldrich (H&A), one of Boston's premier geotechnical consulting firms, to address several issues, among which was the barrier system which was to be integrated into the walls and slabs of the building. H&A provided a design that not only recognized the complexity of the building foundation and the 200+ pile caps upon which the building sat, but also the intent that the system be constructible with a minimum amount of inconvenience and time delays to the General Contractor and other trades.

After the project was bid it was discovered that the low bidder on the membrane portion of the project had neither the experience nor the expertise in all aspects of deploying, detailing and welding such a membrane system or its interface with the various coatings used in the subgrade structure. While the bidder, Premier Caulking of Derry, New Hampshire, had years of experience in waterproofing membranes, nothing they had done even remotely resembled the GSE StudLiner system chosen for gas membrane application or the work required to interface liquid applied membranes with roll produced membrane systems. As part of the qualification package, Resicon USA was included as the training and testing authority approved by GSE and the State of Massachusetts for the StudLiner and the coating system. Resicon personnel spent the next several months working with the subcontractor, the General Contractor, Suffolk Construction, the architect, the engineers and the State of Massachusetts to detail and implement first the pile cap and wall membrane applications, then the body of the project, which sealed the lower level of the entire building.

Resicon provided qualified independent personnel, and trained and certified Premier's personnel on all aspects of welding, detailing and testing the membranes and coatings that were applied. Because of the urgent nature of the work, all training was done on the site during the actual application of the system. Resicon USA also provided on-the-fly design and construction advice to all parties involved in the project which kept the membrane system installation on schedule.