CSDA Contractor Locates Vital Embedments in 20-Story Building Tampa, Florida’s downtown waterfront district is undergoing a renaissance. Water Street in the Channel District is the epicenter of this transformation, which, when completed, will be a mixed-use neighborhood of hotels, office buildings, shops, entertainment, educational spaces, cultural attractions and homes. Artist’s rendering of the new JW Marriott at Water Street in Tampa, Florida. In April of 2018, contractors broke ground on the luxury JW Marriott Tampa Water Street Hotel, adjacent to the Tampa Convention Center and Amalie Arena, home of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. Scheduled to open in late 2020, the luxury Marriott hotel will feature 519 guest rooms and suites, and 42 event rooms boasting more than 71,000 square feet of event space. Tampa’s waterfront development is one of the largest real estate developments in the U.S. No massive construction project is without its hiccups, and this hotel is no exception. During the initial construction, a combination of incorrect concrete pours and mislabeled plans caused many openings to be covered, requiring new ones to be drilled. Electrical contractor ION Electric and plumbing contractor BCH Mechanical needed areas chipped out of the post-tensioned concrete slabs for conduit runs and floor boxes an inch and a half under the slab. In June of 2019, CSDA member Capmen LLC began using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to scan the nine-inch concrete slabs of the 20-floor structure and identify post tension cables, temporary power lines, and electrical conduits buried in the concrete. GPR was essential to ensure that any new holes drilled in the slabs would not hit post-tension cables, electrical lines or other materials. Capmen’s GPR technician scans the nine-inch concrete slab looking for post-tension cables, electrical conduit or other materials Two Capmen GPR technicians used Hilti PS 1000 X-scan concrete scanners to investigate the site. They scanned the designated areas, and once it was determined that no post-tension cables or conduit would be hit, they were given permission from the general contractor to chip out the required holes in the concrete. At times, plans for chipping holes were changed when embedded materials other than the rebar were discovered. When chipping holes, Capmen used dustless chipping hammers to create four- to six-inch openings for three- to five-inch pipe and grinders to cut and remove the rebar. When their GPR scans showed a...