Skip to content

St. Joseph’s Healthcare Redevelopment Project

Unique Soil Conditions

The future location for this tower is located immediately adjacent to the emergency wing of the existing St. Joseph’s hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. HCM is a recognized shoring contractor that will take on many challenges relating to foundation design.

On this particular project, HCM took on the tasks of:

  • shotcrete shoring
  • caissons
  • micropiles
  • excavation
  • site services
  • demolition with the constraints of limited access and project complexity.

A portion of the work was to be performed indoors, which required special care towards the patients of the hospital and the HCM workers. The original design for this inside work included conventional pad footings dowelled in to existing caissons five feet below the finished floor. The soil conditions are unique on this project due to the fact that the site is situated at the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment where bedrock is on an incline. This increased the depth required for adequate bearing stratum, requiring the entire area to be excavated and the perimeter shored. To save costs to all parties involved, HCM proposed an alternate to the original design to provide hand-dug caisson caps around the existing caisson and column construction. Caissons were excavated to depths of 18 feet below the finished floor using reinforced compression rings and shotcrete shoring to reach adequate bedrock.

The above innovations were the optimal solution for this portion of work resulting in another successful hospital project by HCM on budget, on time.

Client: PCL
Location: Hamilton, Ontario

Centron Business Park Retaining Wall

Centron Business Park Retaining Wall

Steep Slope Retaining Wall The site topography presented the developer with the challenging task of constructing a permanent retaining wall structure into a hill formation near Blackfoot Trail in southeast
Read More
Upper House Condominiums - Caisson Wall Piles and Lagging

Upper House Condominiums

Upper House Condominiums HCM completed the shoring for the eight storey Upper House Condominium project which required a 12m deep excavation for two levels of underground parking. A tied-back shoring
Read More
The Bow

The Bow

The future Bow building, located in Calgary, Alberta Canada, is an innovation in both architectural and shoring design. At 58 stories and with a footprint of two city blocks, The
Read More
Centre 10

Centre 10

Centre 10 Two attempts had been made by others to build two high-rise condo towers on the site of the former Gaslight Square retail strip at 10th Ave and 4th
Read More

Maxwell Bates

Maxwell Bates This project, located on Fourth Street in the downtown core of Calgary, consisted of a tied-back continuous caisson wall.  The caisson wall provided zero ground loss and minimal
Read More

Alloa Feedermain

Alloa Feedermain This project involved installation of 3 watertight caisson wall shafts. Two rectangular secant pile wall shaft approx 12m deep and one 6m diameter compression ring shaft approx 7m
Read More