Site Tours

Timber Buildings – Guided Tour
Friday, June 30 | 9:00am to 12:30pm
Cost: $40 (Max 25 participants) 

The  bus tour will be facilitated by engineers involved in the design of four unique timber buildings.
The buildings include the Richmond Olympic Oval, the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre, the Fast + Epp Home Office, and the GNW Pavilion.
These buildings showcase some innovative timber and timber/hybrid designs, including one design incorporating friction dampers.
Tour duration 9:00am to 12:30pm.
Pick up location: Outside the South Tower of the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel at 8:45am, Friday June 30.
*Tour may be cancelled if participation does not meet the minimum number required. If tour is cancelled, refunds will be provided to all participants that purchased a ticket.

Seismic Upgrades – Guided Tour
Friday, June 30 | 9:00am to 12:30pm
Cost: $40 (Max 25 participants)

The bus/walking tour will be facilitated by Engineers involved in the design of seismically upgraded buildings.
The buildings include a Church and a tall building in the downtown core near the conference venue, plus a school and office building outside the downtown core.
These buildings showcase a variety of seismic upgrade techniques for both heritage and more recently constructed buildings – internal, external, energy dissipation, and base isolation.
Pick up location: Outside the South Tower of the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel at 8:30am, Friday June 30.
*Tour may be cancelled if participation does not meet the minimum number required. If tour is cancelled, refunds will be provided to all participants that purchased a ticket.

Tall Buildings – Guided Tour
Friday, June 30 | 9:00am to 12:30pm
Cost: $10 (Max 20 participants)

The walking tour will be facilitated by Engineers involved in the design of five tall buildings in downtown Vancouver. The buildings include the Vancouver House, Alberni by Kengo Kuma, MNP Tower, The Exchange, and The Stack. These buildings showcase a variety of designs including unique shapes, outrigger designs with energy dissipation, V-shaped columns, long span post-tensioned floors.
Meet up location: Outside the South Tower of the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel at 8:45am, Friday June 30.
*Tour may be cancelled if participation does not meet the minimum number required. If tour is cancelled, refunds will be provided to all participants that purchased a ticket.

Tickets can be booked through the registration tab, if you have already registered for the conference you can go back into your profile and add these tours.

Granville Street Bridge – Seismic Retrofit Work Guided Tour
Friday, June 30 | 9:00am to 12:30pm
Cost: $10 (Max 20 participants)
Guided tour starting at the north side of the bridge, with a short ferry across False Creek to the south side on Granville Island. The tour will be facilitated by Engineers involved in the seismic assessment analysis and retrofit design work.

The Granville Street Bridge is a critical transportation link between South Vancouver and the downtown core. The existing bridge is the third Granville Street Bridge at this general alignment, and was constructed in 1954 and carries eight lanes of traffic over False Creek and Granville Island. The main spans comprise seven riveted steel deck truss spans ranging from 29 m to 121 m in length. The approach spans and associated ramps on the South side of the bridge comprise 65 concrete girder spans, and the approach spans and associated ramps on the North side of the bridge comprise 38 concrete girder spans. The main alignment of the bridge was seismically retrofitted in the 1990’s. Included in these retrofits was the use of crescent moon dampers on the concrete approach spans. The original roller bearings supporting the steel truss spans required replacement due to evolving regulatory requirements around the presence of PCB based oils, which had been used to lubricate the bearings. This led to the main span bearings being replaced with lead core elastomeric seismic isolation bearings in 2013. It proved a major challenge to complete 14 of the 16 span jacking operations immediately above Granville Island – Vancouver’s largest tourist destination – and to control noise levels during the removal of 2000 rivets up to 150mm long, while maintaining ‘business as usual’ below. The seismic retrofit performance objective was near-immediate return to service for the bridge following a 2475-year return period earthquake with 50% reserve displacement capacity in the isolators. 
Meet up location: Outside the South Tower of the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel at 8:45am, Friday June 30.
*Tour may be cancelled if participation does not meet the minimum number required. If tour is cancelled, refunds will be provided to all participants that purchased a ticket.