The Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex is a 28-acre waterfront sports village located between 17th and 23rd Streets along the Hudson River in Manhattan. Situated on Piers 59, 60, and 61, the Complex supports a variety of sports, dining, and professional facilities and serves as a major resource for public recreation and waterfront access.

Understanding the historical nature of the piers’ construction, Chelsea Piers has retained the services of GEI’s waterfront engineers to provide a suite of consulting services as part of a comprehensive maintenance plan for the facility’s waterfront assets. Working collaboratively with Chelsea Piers’ team of contractors, engineers, and facility managers, the GEI team’s primary services for this client have included underwater inspections of submerged components—including over 12,000 timber pile locations—and reviewing recently installed construction and repairs for quality control and adherence to design specifications.

In addition, GEI staff developed a customized database application that tracks the historical conditions and repair status of each pile element supporting Piers 59, 60, and 61. This database exports to Google Earth to graphically depict everything from condition grades to construction progress.

Project highlights:

• Comprehensive underwater inspection of over 12,000 pile elements to determine current levels of deterioration in comparison to historical findings of previous inspection efforts
• Flexible scheduling of underwater inspections on an on-call basis to review construction activities and meet critical project milestones
• Coordination among multiple contractor, engineer, and management entities