Vertical Access was retained by Goody Clancy to act as the exterior envelope consultant for the Brooklyn General Post Office and Courthouse Façade Repair project. The design team for this project also included Robert Silman Associates, Jim Rhodes of Preservation Design, Jablonski Building Conservation, Faithful & Gould, Heller & Metzger, Viridian and Yu & Associates.

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Natalie Wampler from Mount Auburn Cemetery and Kelly Streeter and Mike Gilbert from Vertical Access completed a documentation pilot project this summer at Mount Auburn. The goal of the project was to investigate ways to streamline the data gathering taking place as part of the ongoing, multi-year survey at Mount Auburn.

The use of the Tablet PC Annotation System (TPAS) was evaluated for its ability to create a visual link between the data in Microsoft Access and the survey area. The ability of AutoCAD to export block attributes into Microsoft Access was investigated. Photograph management strategies were also explored and improved.

The full presentation, which was presented at the BSA Historic Resources Committee meeting in Boston on September 11 and at the NCPTT Cemetery Preservation Summit in Nashville on October 20, is available to view here.

At the recent Association for Preservation Technology International (APTI) conference in Los Angeles that concluded November 6, a renewed Preservation Engineering Technical Committee met under the guidance of co-chairs John Dumsick and Tim Crowe. A revised mission statement was approved:

To serve as a leading forum and resource for proven and emerging technologies in the education and practice of engineering in historic preservation/heritage conservation.

After an initial meeting of 32 engineers, four task groups broke out to discuss specific goals and timelines:

The preservation engineering curricula in education group will be represented by Michael Lynch (Kaese and Lynch Architecture and Engineering)and will concentrate on developing P.E. curricula in higher education. Manhattan College in New York is interested in developing a graduate level program in Preservation Engineering.

The publications task group is led by Rick Ortega (RMJM Hillier) and is planning to develop a compendium of articles about the history and engineering case studies of cast iron and steel structures. Also, a bibliography of preservation engineering references will be formalized and published.

The workshops task group is developing two distinct initiatives. First, Tim Crowe (Wiss Janney Elstner & Associates, Inc.) is responsible for further developing the proposed wood symposium that will take place in the next year at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in Spring Green, WI. Secondly, Ron Anthony (Anthony & Associates, Inc.) one of the local conference organizers for next year's annual conference in Denver, will work on putting together a preservation engineering track for that conference.

Finally, John Dumsick (Robert Silman Associates) is responsible for the outreach task group. For more information on the Engineering Technical Committee, please contact John at dumsick@silman.com.

The CHSA (Construction History Society of America) is hosting a one-day event in Washington, DC on December 2 dedicated to construction history. The CHSA strives to act as a forum for those interested in any feature of American design and construction history. This event aims to gather three panels representatives from government agencies, professional and trade associations and design and construction history societies, to debate and discuss various topics.

For more information on the event, download the brochure.

A call for papers for the next CHSA meeting in May 2010 is here.