1990 NOVA Award Winners

Designers of modern storage and manufacturing facilities often specify ultra-flat floors for lift trucks and robotic vehicles to operate effectively. For many applications, such as high-stacking warehouses with automated retrieval, controlled floor flatness is essential for accurate and safe operation of automated systems.

The traditional method of determining flatness of concrete slabs is to measure the gap between a ten-foot straight edge and the floor. This procedure proved to be unrepeatable, subjective-and ineffective in controlling finished-floor quality.

In 1982, Allen Face developed a new method to measure floor flatness. Based on quality control principles, this method, called the F-Number System, is considerably more accurate and repeatable.

For floors where vehicles follow fixed routes, Face developed the Profileograph to measure elevation differences along vehicle paths. For floors where traffic routes vary, Face invented the Dipstick to record the relative elevations of points on a 1' by 1' grid. Elevation differences recorded by the Profileograph or Dipstick are run through a computer, which translates the data into numbers that indicate the relative flatness of the floor.

The F-Number System has been adopted by the American Society for Testing and Materials and the American Concrete Institute as the standard method for determining floor flatness. Builders can now specify floors with a desired flatness, and contractors can measure finished floors to determine whether they meet specifications.

This innovative method for measuring floor flatness has led to new solutions for placing ultra-flat concrete floor slabs. More importantly, the F-Number System has significantly improved the construction and verification of the flatness of concrete floors while lowering construction costs.

The F-Number System introduces such innovations as equipment for measuring differences in floor elevation, software for statistical analysis of measurement data, and application of quality control principles to floor flatness.

Primarily Responsible:
Allen Face, III
Contact: Allen Face, III
Allen Face & Associates
P.O. Box 6536
Newport News, VA 23606
Phone: 804-591-2121

The United States Postal Service designs and builds about 100 local post office buildings every year. In the 1980's, building plans and drawings for each post office were unique, requiring an average of 30 months to develop.

In 1986, the U.S. Postal Service assembled a task force to create a computer-aided design (CAD) system to shorten this process. Today, the agency uses a unique design system called the Kit of Parts to produce the plans and specifications for buildings in less than a month.

The Kit of Parts is a CAD-based system that allows postmasters and local architects to create customized building plans using flexible design modules, or "templates". These modules integrate architectural, electrical, and mechanical components and accommodate the design of post offices ranging from 8,000 to 35,000 square feet.

An entire post office building, tailored to local community needs, can be designed by combining modules for six functional areas: the service lobby, box lobby, workroom, administrative offices, delivery vehicle loading, and loading dock.

With the Kit of Parts, local postmasters, resident architects, and other parties work together to quickly plan the layout of a new post office. Modules are assembled through CAD into a total building plan, and complete working drawings are produced in only three to four weeks.

In addition to accelerating building design time, the Kit of Parts has reduced construction costs, improved design quality, and enhanced the efficiency of new post offices.

The Kit of Parts is a CAD system that integrates architectural, electrical and mechanical components into design modules and have reduced the time required to create U.S. Post Office working drawings from 30 months per building to just one.

Primarily Responsible:
James L. Brinkley;
Mitchell H. Gordon;
Martin E. Gorman, Jr., AIA;
Stanley W. Smith;
Billy W. Wright
Contact: Martin E. Gorman, Jr., AIA
Jones Mah Gaskill Rhodes, Inc.
80 Monroe Avenue
Memphis, TN 38103
Phone: 901-526-9600

The Connaught Tunnel had been the Canadian Pacific Railroad's main route through the Canadian Rockies since 1916. By the late 1980's, however, the tunnel's steep approaches and single track created a serious bottleneck.

The decision to construct a new tunnel for westbound trains required overcoming a major obstacle: purging such a tunnel, up to nine miles long, of the heat and gases generated by trains with up to six locomotives pulling 110 heavily-loaded cars uphill. Conventional tunnel ventilation systems could not clear a tunnel fast enough to allow an economically viable flow of traffic.

To answer the challenge, Sam Levy and Norman Danziger of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade and Douglas segmented the tunnel into two parts to ventilate the segments separately, with a ventilation shaft near mid-tunnel. A series of gates, at this shaft and the eastern entrance, and five fans are operated by computers at Canadian Pacific Rail offices on the West Coast.

When a train enters the tunnel, the eastern segment is closed and ventilated. As the train reaches mid-tunnel, the central gate opens for it to pass into the western segment, then closes when it has passed. While the train traverses the western segment, air in the eastern segment is cleaned. After the train exits, the western segment is purged. By this time, the eastern section can receive the next train.

The Mount Macdonald Tunnel Ventilation System has enabled Canadian Pacific Rail to increase the volume of traffic through its main transcontinental rail link-at a construction cost that was much lower than alternative methods.

The ventilation system for the nine-mile-long Mt. Macdonald Tunnel was the key to the economic viability of the project. The tunnel is partitioned with a system of automatically controlled gates and variable pitch fans that purge fumes quickly allows greatly increased traffic flow.

Primarily Responsible:
Norman Danziger;
Nick Jagic;
Sam Levy;
Stan Lorch;
John Pascu;
Emil Siranovic

Contact: Sam Levy
Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas, Inc.
1 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10119
Phone: 212-465-5000