BrandSafway was named the 2018 winner of the Innovation Award from the Scaffold and Access Industry Association (SAIA), the premier professional organization in the industry. BrandSafway received the award during the 2018 SAIA Annual Convention and Exposition for a uniquely engineered solution, which was designed for the Reimagine 900 revitalization project at 900 North Michigan Avenue on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.
“The SAIA Innovation Award for the Reimagine 900 project recognizes our engineering team’s ability to push the envelope and design creative solutions to meet the unique needs of our clients,” said Bill Hayes, president and CEO. “I am extremely proud of our engineering expertise. We’re always looking at how to increase productivity, while also improving safety.”
The retail space at 900 North Michigan Avenue is anchored by Bloomingdale’s and houses 60 other retailers including Gucci, MaxMara, J.Crew and Michael Kors. The renovation project included transforming an existing atrium ceiling into a digital art installation with images and videos projected on a 184-foot LED display—all without interrupting visitors’ experiences.
The access solution designed for the project centered around BrandSafway’s Spider® suspended swing stages and the HAKI® aluminum truss system. BrandSafway is the primary distributor of HAKI products in North America.
“Once we walked the jobsite with Pepper Construction Company, we saw that the scope of the project rested on the ability to span the atrium, a distance of about 30 feet,” said Doug Knapp, a regional product manager at BrandSafway. “We realized the HAKI truss system would be the best solution.”
BrandSafway worked with building engineers to determine safe load limits and to develop a solution that could be put together quickly—completing assembly a week and a half faster than expected and helping Pepper Construction Company finish the project on time.
“Altogether, the project required some 460 trusses, which if they were connected end-to-end would stretch for more than a mile,” said Scott Metz, project manager at Safway Atlantic, a BrandSafway company. “If you look at all the components that went into creating the work platform, I think most people would consider it quite an engineering accomplishment.”
Founded in 1972, the SAIA is a nonprofit membership association for the scaffold and access industry that provides safety education to thousands of contractors through its seminars and training courses. Each year, the SAIA’s Innovation Award is presented to the member company that demonstrates a new or innovative way to utilize an existing product on a project, or delivers a new product to the field.