World Fence News

May 2018

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(This report was contributed by Brian Landfried, owner of Apex Fence Company in Canton, Ga., north of Atlanta. Although Apex tack- les many "design-build" projects, this one presented as many unique chal- lenges as you'll probably find in a sin- gle job. Here's the scoop.) • • • Beneath the towering Atlanta skyline and a stone's throw from the new Mercedes Benz Stadium is locat- ed a parking garage that serves as ac- cess to the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, a 26-story structure housing many U.S. government agency offic- es and federal courts for the Northern District of Georgia. As important as the building is, and the fact that it, like all federal fa- cilities, could be a target, the existing perimeter security measures were se- verely lacking, primarily consisting of rusted old chain link fence. Apex Fence Company was called on to design and replace the perim- eter fencing with an attractive, very strong anti-scale fence system. In oth- er words, a "keep 'em out" fence. The project consisted of two dis- tinctly different phases: Phase One was an anti-climb fence mounted to the concrete floor and Phase Two was securing the low walls on the under- side of the parking structure to the ceiling. The stage was set to install an 8' tall steel curved top fence, but after a series of meetings, things got more complicated. The building's owner, the Gen- eral Services Administration, wasn't comfortable with only 8' tall for the application, so Apex tapped the ca- pabilities of steel fence manufacturer Iron World Manufacturing of Laurel, Md. to help devise a custom solution. There was some concern since the job involved working in a parking deck with much of this fence securing the top of the side walls to the under- side of the floor above, and there was some concern of structure move- ment. However, Iron World jumped at the opportunity to participate on a challenging proj- ect such as this, led by Lew Blas- tic. Lew drove to Atlanta to set his eyes on the project with me. I shared my design ideas with Lew to see if Iron World would be willing to "do things a little differ- ently" on this project. They were, and they did. The final rendition of the an- ti-climb portion of this fence ended up being a 14' tall steel fence surrounded by a 24" concrete wall, 1 foot beneath grade and 1 foot above grade, provid- ing a full 15' of fence height with 4' of post in the ground! A 12" x 12" channel was cut into the concrete floor and excavated in grade, and the Apex crew set their posts 2' deep in grade. Forms were built to construct the low wall 12" above the exist- ing grade. After the wall had cured around the posts it was time to set panels. A series of large lulls and scissor lifts were needed to place the panels, with their top-heavy "candy cane" de- sign. Dropping a 14' tall, 265 lb. panel onto 10 brackets at the same time was not for the faint of heart. Apex Fence Company called on Bruce Jones Fencing out of Jackson- ville to handle the task. Apex Fence Company has worked with Bruce on many larger projects like the Dobbins Air Reserve Base 15,000 lineal foot chain link job and 27,000 lineal feet of chain link for Walmart in Florida. To complicate matters, this park- ing deck is completely full of vehicles and every spot is designated. The co- ordination of displacing vehicles so we could access areas to work was challenging, to say the least. If that wasn't fun enough, it was time to move up into the deck itself and start securing trapezoid shaped openings that followed the ramp an- gles. Nothing was square and these varied from 5' tall to 15' tall. Months earlier, Apex had to design a fence that would fit properly and still "look right" with no two posts being the same length and no square panels. I was adamant that this was go- ing to look right, along with providing the security the government required. I designed a sleeved post that would allow for expansion and contraction vertically, along with movement as vehicles drove up and down by using a full length 4" square post and a 5" square receiving sleeve 8" in length. Both were secured with 8" x 8" x 3/16" thick steel plates and anchored to the structure. Now the panels had to fit verti- cally in a trapezoid shaped hole. I de- signed panels that all exceeded their opening height and asked Iron World to leave the bottom 2 rails loose on the pickets. Apex created a jig, and, after tak- ing a measurement on each side of the panel, cut the bottom to align with the angle of the concrete structure. Since an 8" sleeve was being used, they moved the rails 8" from the end of the pickets to clear the additional thick- ness of the 5" square sleeve. The two rails that were left loose were then fastened to the pickets by drilling each individual hole and hammering a factory rivet in to secure them, just as if they had been fully as- sembled at Iron World. The end result was panels that fit each opening perfectly, and horizon- tal rails follow the transitions up and down 8" from the concrete structure, Contractor and manufacturer team up to meet critical need for upgraded security at Atlanta federal building continued on page 74 What was originally spec'd as an 8' tall barrier was deemed insufficient by the government, and what resulted was this specially designed 14' tall steel arched top anti-climb fence set into a 2' high concrete wall. Below, the lower level barrier during installation. (Apex Fence Company photos) MAY 2018 Celebrating our 34th year of publication • Visit us online at www.worldfencenews.com

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