The Kelowna skyline is set to change dramatically in the coming years thanks to several major projects, including Bernard Block.
The three tower project is currently piling the final towers, including a residential tower and an office building.
“Kelowna has certainly seen a change in recent years,” said Luke Turri, executive vice president of the developer’s mission group. “It is becoming more and more attractive for people who stay full-time.”
Turri said the city and the Okanagan region have historically been a hotspot for vacationers, tourists and retirees, but have recently become a major urban hub.
“The entrepreneurship has grown, the tech sector here has grown and more and more, as people move into a hybrid work environment, you see that a high quality of life is an important factor in people’s choice of life.”
Turri said the city is now able to host many of the conveniences of other major urban centers, but the mountains and lake are only minutes away.
And with more large projects comes innovation.
Turri stated that the Bernard Block project will be several premieres.
Mission Group works with Soletanche Bachy Canada to implement cutting edge technology that makes batch work quieter. The piles for the project are among the deepest ever drilled in Canada.
In the past, deep foundations were built in Kelowna with rammed tubular steel piles. Large diameter steel pipes are driven into the ground using large cranes or vibratory hammers. Steel driven piles have been an acceptable method for deep foundations for decades, but the arrival of larger, taller buildings in the Okanagan now requires a more innovative approach.
The project team uses an alternative pile driving method called Continuous Flight Auger (CFA).
“The auger digs into the ground and when that auger comes out it is replaced by a concrete pile. Instead of driving, you remove earth with the snail’s head and replace it with a heap, ”says Turri.
The project team in Great Britain had to have custom-made screw heads made for the boreholes.
Turri said large-scale drilling can disrupt neighborhoods during the heavy and noisy steel pile process.
Typical drilling rigs used on Canadian soil have maximum drilling depths of about 30 meters.
The piles of the Mission Group residential and commercial complex will reach drilling depths of 52 meters in a single pass. The process is expected to take three months. The entire project is expected to take three years.
“To make all of this possible and to work with the building design, we certainly had to coordinate closely with our civil engineer Glotman Simpson and our consultant Tetra Tech,” said Turri. “We all coordinated the effort with the necessary tests and designs.”
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