Recently, surveyors, contractors and engineers visited the future home of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, scheduled to open in Museum Park in 2015, to inspect and excavate the land and prepare it for construction. The purpose of the excavation was to determine any points of interference between the remnants of the old slip wall, caps and other debris, and the locations of the new Museum foundation pilings. Done in advance, this work is expected to save time and money when installing the building’s foundation pilings.

First, surveyors from Miller Legg used Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to identify the locations of buried solid objects on the land and then developed a drawing interpreting the GPR findings. Then, they used the drawing to mark the ground with locations of buried objects, in this case the steel sheet piling and concrete slip wall caps of one of the boat slips of the old Port of Miami.

New Museum Construction Managers Suffolk Construction, then performed the construction work shown in the pictures below. Remnants of the slip wall and concrete caps were located in seven places on the project site during the excavation project. In addition to the steel sheet pilings and the concrete cap of the slip wall were old wood timbers, concrete slabs and foundations of waterfront buildings associated with the old Port.

To view pictures of the excavation process, please click here: Miami Science Museum Site Excavation Photo Binder