执行一个未经测试的计划，以拉直3,000吨重的建筑物，即“ Granby的倾斜塔”，这是弗吉尼亚州海滩的结构工程师Danny Speight的一些严重的chutzpah。
Rectifying the condemned Norfolk, Va., building ominously looming over a dense urban neighborhood required bucking the judgement of the area’s “more prominent engineers,” Speight says, including his own respected mentor. During the course of several decades, those other engineers concluded that the best way to correct the building’s 21-in. northward lean was to drive piles beneath main thoroughfares that the city was reluctant to close.
Going against conventional wisdom, the president of Speight Marshall & Francis calculated that the building was structurally stable despite the lean. He argued that the tilt hadn’t worsened in almost a century. “I said, ‘what if we just cut the building away from the columns, leave the bottom part of the columns on the foundation and cut the upper part away; basically just split the building away from its foundation and then we work from that.”
The out-of-the-box plan to jack the 9-story building upright had never been accomplished on a building so tall, according to the project team. “The concept was legitimately out there in left field,” Speight says. “When I talked to people, even my other partners, they were like, ‘Man, I don’t think it’s going to work.’”
为期四天的努力需要从建筑物的基础上切下21列，然后用液压驱动的千斤顶提起和平整柱子。连接21列的水平结构钢框架在一楼上方约10英尺的位置，阻止了齿轮的架子。马特·弗朗西斯（Matt Francis）是斯佩特公司（Speight）公司的退休伙伴，说斯佩特（Speight）并非“面对挑战，无所畏惧；这意味着要采取轻率决定的趋势，但无所畏惧是非常接近的。”
该市在2000年代初谴责这座塔楼后，几位车主未能重建这座历史悠久的建筑，该建筑于1907年建于一座前溪床上。马拉松发展总裁弗兰克·“好友”·加达姆斯（Frank“ Buddy” Gadams）在2016年购买后决定恢复建筑物。“丹尼（Danny）是将该项目融合在一起的胶水，”加达姆斯（Gadams）谈到这座耗资1160万美元的混合用途建筑时说。“他是该项目完成的原因。”
Speight originally devised his plan for a previous owner in consultation with Rudi Van Leeuwen of Fredericksburg, Va., a Dutch structural engineer and brace excavation and deep-foundation specialist who came out of retirement when the project was taken off the shelf in 2016. Van Leeuwen helped Speight create a separate set of drawings for each step in the process, totaling 70 sheets.
The jacking procedure finished approximately $300,000 under its $3-million budget. “I wasn’t cocky about it,” Speight says. “I was just sure from Day 1 it would work; absolutely sure.”
