The brief

A major residential tower in Tampa needed wind and fall protection as it climbed. These platforms hang off a live high-rise build, so they have to take real wind loads and keep people safe. There's no "should be fine" on a job like this.

What I did

• Designed the custom hydraulic protection system: 36 steel screens providing five levels of wind and fall protection around the working floors.
• The system climbed with the building as it rose, around 40 storeys of it.
• Produced the complete calculation package behind the design, using SolidWorks FEA, AutoCAD, Autodesk Robot, and hand calculations to check it from different angles.
• Coordinated with fleet management so the right equipment was actually available when the project needed it.
• Balanced safety, the project's requirements, and what was realistic to operate on site.

The interesting part

The hard part usually isn't the maths. It's that the maths has to survive contact with a real site, a real schedule, and real people using the equipment. The CAD work, FEA, Robot checks, and hand calculations all had to point to a design that was not only defensible on paper, but also practical for the fleet team to supply and the site team to operate, over and over, floor after floor.