![]() ![]() In Harris County alone, 1 trillion gallons of water fell over the course of four days shutting down businesses, flooding neighborhoods, and displacing thousands of families. In September 2017, Hurricane Harvey set records in every category unloading 33 trillion gallons of rain, devastating many areas along Texas' Gulf Coast. ![]() Instead, it was the Tax Day storm that provided the testing, but the building easily weathered the storm, suffering no damage. Fortunately, the flood gate had been finished five days earlier, with testing scheduled to be performed the following weekend. Earth berms (passive) were also created as natural means of redirecting flow and aiding absorption to lessen the load on the structure.īefore the flood protection measures were 100% complete, the monumental Tax Day Flood of 2016 hit, dropping 16 inches of rain in less than 12 hours. The flood gate is 30 inches high (determined by historical water heights) and deploys automatically as the water rises. The final solution was to install a flood gate at the top of the loading dock (passive) and flood doors at the entrances to the basement at the loading dock (active). Because weather conditions, and especially flash floods, can change so rapidly, there is often not enough time to get to the facility to activate protective systems. Although passive measures typically have a higher capital cost up front, our client requested passive systems where feasible to alleviate the responsibility on employees. In general, an active system requires a person to physically activate it, whereas a passive system is activated by flood waters and therefore, is more automatic. We surveyed the building to identify areas most vulnerable to water infiltration and conducted a runoff analysis to determine how much water would enter the site from overland flow, storm sewers, roof drainage, and from the face of the building.īased on the survey results, we recommended a hybrid solution of active and passive flood protection systems. The combination of a below-grade loading dock that essentially invited water in and basement-level critical spaces that could not be relocated proved exceptionally challenging in determining the most resilient solution. Walter P Moore’s Civil and Diagnostics groups were asked to conduct a site analysis and to fast-track a design that would protect the tower from future flooding. It took seven days to restore operations to 3000 Post Oak, which also meant seven days of downtime for hundreds of employees at one of Bechtel’s major global offices. Unfortunately, all of the building’s critical mechanical systems were located in the basement, and given the structure’s age, typical remediation efforts such as relocating these systems to upper levels was simply not feasible. As the streets adjacent to 3000 Post Oak exceeded their capacity, the deluge flooded the tower’s basement via the below-grade loading dock, with waters reaching 9.5 feet. The infamous 2015 Memorial Day Flood was heavily concentrated over southwest Houston, and within six hours had dropped 11 inches on grounds already saturated from the previous two months’ heavy rains. Such was the case for 3000 Post Oak, a 19-story commercial office building that houses the oil, gas & chemical global operations of a worldwide engineering firm. Even areas not located within the 100-year flood plain have experienced flooding conditions during two recent events - the Memorial Day Flood of 2015 and the Tax Day Flood of 2016. After laying the roots in domestic market and realizing the increasing global demand for environment improvement due to the climate change, Jiangyin NewFlag, as the International Sales Division in charge of the international marketing for the whole group’s products, was established to fulfill the group’s global distribution plan.Houston, Texas has long been known as the Bayou City, although in recent years has earned a reputation as the Flood City. With the support of our parent company Jiangyin Huaneng, who is a pioneer and giant in electric heating industry for more than 20 years, awaked to the potential market to fight against the increasing flood risk in China causing huge loss to the public every year, which has drawn the attention by both civilian and government for urge demand for flood defence and resilience, a sub-company Jiangsu Yongjing Water Conservacy Engineering was founded for the development and production of flood protection systems for both civil and project purpose. was established as a key subsidiary of Jiangyin Huaneng Group, assigned the task of international marketing for group products.
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