Architectural researchers Jim Heuer and Robert Mercer on Saturday morning at the Architectural Heritage Center will deliver an updated lecture: “Hidden Brilliance: The Residential Architecture of Joseph Jacobberger.”

Jacobberger designed homes in many styles, including American Craftsman, English Cottage and Jacobean, “foretelling the Northwest style later practiced by Pietro Belluschi and others,” according to the AHC website.

Jacobberger’s designs “bridge the classical era of the late 19th century through early modernism,” Heuer said. He and Mercer pored over hundreds of Jacobberger’s designs and took digital photos of the front elevations and details of about 260 homes, yielding about 675 digital images.

Val Ballestrem, education manager at the Architectural Heritage Center, agrees that Jacobberger was “one of the most significant” early 20th century architects in Portland.

“Nobody worked in a vacuum back then, and people were aware of the work of others,” he said. “Certainly what Jacobberger did was easily influential just as Belluschi’s was later and then A.E. Doyle’s.”

The difference, Ballestrem said, was that while Jacobberger and some other influential architects stayed in the Portland area, Belluschi and others took on work in places such as Boston and New York. Like some other notable Portland architects, Jacobberger had more influence regionally than nationally because he didn’t receive as much exposure.

“He was not as well-known, but the quality of his work was fantastic,” Ballestrem said.

Jacobberger has been known mostly for his designs for the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, including the original design of St. Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 1715 N.W. Couch St.; it was completed in 1926.

Jacobberger was a devout Catholic and became the Portland diocese’s de facto architect, designing many buildings for the archdiocese but also homes for many of its parishioners.

Saturday’s presentation at the AHC will also include new photos of the exterior and interior of the home that Jacobberger designed for his own family at 1502 S.W. Upper Hall St., Mercer said.

The presentation is scheduled for 10 a.m. More details are available at .

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Extensive research by two local architectural enthusiasts is shining a spotlight on some influential early Portland architects.

Robert Mercer, assistant dean at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University, and Jim Heuer, chief technology officer at Evos Logistics, met in Portland and have been a couple for 27 years. Their love of architectural history has evolved over time.

Mercer grew up in Northeast Portland and said he loved going with his mother to shop at the Lloyd Center because of the old houses they’d pass along the way.

“It was just one of those lifelong things that I was fascinated with old houses, and Jim experienced the same thing growing up in Illinois,” Mercer said. “We never did much about it, but if we’d go somewhere, we’d take old house tours.”

Heuer and Mercer started conducting serious architectural research about 16 years ago, when they bought their house and learned that it was designed by architect Emil Schacht in the early 1900s. That led to the couple giving a presentation on Schacht’s work for the Architectural Heritage Center about 10 years ago. He was known for American Craftsman-style designs, particularly in the Willamette Heights neighborhood.

“He came to town in about 1885 or ’86 and died in 1927,” Heuer said. “He did hundreds of projects, was very creative and introduced arts and crafts and craftsman styles to Portland.”

Then in 2008 Heuer and Mercer delivered a presentation on the work of architect Joseph Jacobberger. On Saturday will give an updated version of that lecture, “Hidden Brilliance: The Residential Architecture of Joseph Jacobberger,” at the Architectural Heritage Center.

Heuer and Mercer spent many months researching Schacht, scouring old newspaper archives and researching the details of all of the houses – approximately 100 – he designed. Next they tracked down the homes’ current owners and invited them to a party spotlighting the homes’ history. To the couple’s surprise, people representing 70 of the homes showed up.

“We are strong believers that if you know the history of your house and community, it enriches your life and sense of belonging,” Mercer said.

The couple spent three years tracking down details about Jacobberger’s designs for private homes in Portland. They started by spending a week at the University of Oregon‘s Knight Library taking digital photos of hundreds of his designs. Then they visited the physical locations of more than 100 surviving houses and took more pictures.

“Jim is really an architectural photographer,” Mercer said.

But Heuer and Mercer didn’t stop there. Next they wrote letters and even knocked on the owners’ doors to ask if they could take interior photos.

“Amazingly, a great many people said, ‘That’s cool; come on in,’ ” Mercer said.

Their research yielded voluminous information on Jacobberger’s career, which Heuer and Mercer distilled into a 125-page presentation and 22 pages of detailed listings of all the houses he designed.

Architect Bill Hawkins, author of “100 Years of Great Portland Houses,” said the research performed by Heuer and Mercer is indispensable in bringing the work of architects like Jacobberger and Schacht to the forefront.

“It’s astounding how much work they put into it,” Hawkins said. “They used their wonderful talents in bringing up very important architects who had big practices but are just not known today.”

Heuer and Mercer also researched and presented at the AHC a program on architect Alfred Faber, who moved to Portland from Philadelphia in 1904 and was one of the first to popularize the bungalow style in the Northwest.

The couple has chosen to research architects working from the late 1890s to World War I, Mercer said, because it was a time when the middle class had money to build homes and hire architects to design them.

“Portland was the fastest-growing city in the country in 1910,” he said. “It grew 130 percent between 1900 and 1910 and doubled again between 1910 and 1920.”

Val Ballestrem, education manager at the Architectural Heritage Center, said it’s indebted to Heuer and Mercer for contributing to its efforts to preserve Portland’s architectural history and for uncovering information on early prominent architects.

People tend to remember only famous Portland architects like John Yeon, A.E. Doyle or Pietro Belluschi, Ballestrem said. Others “had fallen under the radar and had been forgotten,” but undeservedly so, he said.

“They had prolific and lengthy careers locally and did work that has lasted,” he said. “That’s what architecture is all about.”

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RESEARCH
Research Into Action recently added Linda Dethman as managing director and executive consultant. She previously built and served as vice president of the Program Market and Assessment Group at Cadmus. She also was president of Dethman & Associates for 25 years. She helps clients understand their target audiences, and suggests marketing and design strategies to encourage greater and more cost-effective participation.

SENDING 91��Ƶ PEOPLE I�շ��ѳ�:
Please send your announcements to djcpeople@djcOregon.com.

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As architects and builders search for innovative materials to meet growing demands for owners’ sustainable projects, universities may provide a key connection.

After visiting ‘s showroom in Southeast Portland, two Oregon State University students were inspired to look more deeply into what they consider an up-and-coming sustainable material. Mike Pullen, owner of Bamboo Revolution, is donating materials to the research; he says the results could be a boon to his fast-growing business.

“A builder on the leading edge will want to adopt new materials and technology, but doesn’t have the resources or ability to test them him- or herself,” said Sean Penrith, executive director of . “The academic world and construction industry may be worlds apart, but it’s a symbiotic relationship that should happen more often.”

OSU students Skyler Mlasko and Danny Way are working with assistant professor Arijit Sinha to discern whether bamboo has more structural applications than typically considered in the U.S. market. , a student-managed grant program, is providing $3,000 for the effort.

“For smaller companies with limited resources, having the university lend a helping hand and put the time and hours into something we can’t – it’s obviously a huge benefit,” Pullen said.

Bamboo Revolution is already inspiring architects and contractors to prominently feature bamboo in their projects. Doors, floors, countertops and wall panels all are made from bamboo, and company sales are on a trajectory that reveals a growing market.

Sales increased 50 percent in 2008 and 30 percent in 2009, prompting Pullen in September 2009 to begin remodeling a 1927 auto parts store into its current showroom. Sales have continued to grow 30 percent each year, he said.

For the research, Bamboo Revolution’s bamboo first will be glued together to make larger glu-lam beams. Pullen and the researchers are hoping to work with Eugene-based Walsh Industries, a company that specializes in custom glu-lam beam manufacturing.

At OSU, the team will conduct a series of strength and destructibility tests on the bamboo glu-lam beams. Such data have not been published yet, according to the team.

“Bamboo could be competitive in the market because initial studies say that it has structural properties comparable with wood and conventional building materials,” Sinha said. “But there are no documents out there giving the actual values as a structural material, which will be needed for building codes to be adapted.”

Pullen recently started growing bamboo in Albany with the hope that he could eventually source all of his material locally. If bamboo could be used as a structural component, it would dramatically increase the value of his farm because he would be able to use more pieces of the grassy stalks.

A lot of the material can’t be used in furniture panels because of inherent aesthetic flaws. But Pullen pointed out that for structural use, all that matters is performance – not aesthetics.

In the future, Pullen hopes to see bamboo not only accepted in the building code, but also considered seismically safe.

“It’s a superior material because it doesn’t have a complete failure point, whereas fir will actually break completely at some point,” he said. “It would be fantastic if there was seismic activity because it has flexibility within the beam.”

While the six-month project will not lead to a revolution of that magnitude, the team says it is a vital first step in advancing bamboo research.

“(The structural tests) have been on my mind since starting the company,” Pullen said. “But instead of having to spend the money up front, the university is performing that, and I’m able to continue focusing on making sales to keep the company running in the present tense.”

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The recently commissioned a research team to examine how multiple common building methods affect a building envelope’s ability to keep warm or cool air either in or out.

The team spent two years looking at different construction “assemblies” – steel-stud construction, for example – and the way heat can travel through them. The research was accepted by the ASHRAE research board, and researcher and building science specialist Stéphane P. Hoffman recently presented the results to a group of engineers, architects and officials at the Center for Architecture in Portland.

Hoffman’s team believes that its data, gathered from laboratory experiments and three-dimensional models, will help create more accurate energy consumption predictions. It also expects that the information will eventually be incorporated into building codes.

Hoffman recently discussed the research with the 91��Ƶ.

91��Ƶ: The overall effect of your research will be creation of energy models with greater accuracy. Why is that important?

Stéphane P. Hoffman: Our research provides an understanding of the actual energy consumption of the building, and the knowledge of how to selectively make interventions to reduce energy consumption.

This is of particular interest if you are designing to the Living Building Challenge standards or a net-zero energy building. You need to understand how much energy will be lost or consumed through the building envelope, because that drives the sizing of your mechanical systems, which drives the sizing of your photovoltaic (solar panels), or your geothermal or other site-generated energy.

If you’re looking to minimize how many solar panels you have to put on the building, you need to really understand the real loads they need to support.

91��Ƶ: For projects trying to meet the Living Building Challenge, there are concerns about three things that are difficult to model: how much energy a building will need, how much energy these new solar or other technologies will generate, and how people will behave in the building. How does your research fit into that challenge?

Hoffman: The information in this study helps you address one of those components, which is the actual energy consumption of the building enclosure. What people do in the building is probably a much more sophisticated model. Our research provides a tool on which to make better-informed decisions about the design of an enclosure system.

91��Ƶ: To start with, introduce us to the idea of building envelope performance. A lot of this is measured with an “R” value. What is an R value and how does it work?

Hoffman: The R value is a measurement of the thermal resistance of an assembly to heat flow – how good a material is at minimizing heat loss. It’s a property of the material, but also of how it’s used in the construction of the building and interfacing with various assemblies.

Some materials – for example, board insulation – are very good and have a high R value. Some materials like steel studs are great conductors – so they’re the opposite, and have a very low R value; this is called a “thermal bridge.”

When you mix these materials you have to come up with an effective R value for that assembly, and that is the problem.

If you have, for example, a batt (fiberglass) insulation in a steel stud assembly, the batt insulation has an R of 19 – but the bridging that occurs through the steel stud reduces the overall R value by more than half.

91��Ƶ: I understand that the “thermal bridge” problem allows heat to travel through the conductive materials, like steel, to circumvent the insulating values of insulation. How do people deal with this problem currently?

Hoffman: Over recent years, the expected R values of building have been decreasing, but they don’t reflect actual performance.

There’s a concept out there that if a little insulation is good, more must be better, and a lot is best.  At a certain point, though, you can add more and more insulation but you won’t overcome the thermal bridge. With our research, you can find out the optimal level of insulation.

The code had just been saying “add more insulation,” but I think what we’ll go to at some point is more effective insulation. This is the current drive in a lot of the industry in terms of modeling: a change to more performance-based modeling instead of prescriptive modeling.

91��Ƶ: What is the problem for people designing buildings facing this “thermal bridging” issue?

Hoffman: Right now, there’s very little accounting for additional heat loss. It’s traditionally been made up for with additional safety factors that the mechanical consultant applies when sizing his mechanical equipment.

However, the lack of an ability to accurately model this means that you can’t give the mechanical consultant a good sense of what the actual energy use of the building will be – and they might use more money to make a bigger system than is needed as a result. How can you size a mechanical system if you don’t know the actual energy use of the building?

As technology has improved, we can more and more accurately model the actual performance and help the mechanical consultant understand what the actual loads will be on the mechanical system.

91��Ƶ: Why hasn’t there been another study like yours to find the actual impact of thermal bridges?

Hoffman: Up until now, all thermal modeling of assemblies has been done only in two dimensions, which works well when you’ve got something that’s infinitely long. If you’re doing a warehouse building, and it’s infinitely long, you have the ability to take a cross-section and model it very consistently, because heat loss at the periphery is minimal.

Unfortunately, we don’t build in two dimensions. That’s where the impact of our use of 3-D modeling comes in, is being able to determine how these interfaces impact the value of the walls … especially in areas where the plane of construction changes, like in window transitions, corners and slab edges.

91��Ƶ: How can someone use your findings, and how might this change how a building is designed?

Hoffman: The report provides a series of graphs and tables, which allow practitioners to determine heat loss without having to do these 3-D models themselves. From this they could find out that is the actual heat loss, and what is the impact of additional insulation. You can also determine the risk of condensation, by determining surface temperature at critical points.

One of the ways this information can be used is to figure out where a majority of the heat loss is – Is it in support for cladding, or in the slab edge? It helps you focus your design efforts. It also helps you understand the elements in that assembly that really influence the thermal bridge, and how those could be modified to reduce the impact.

91��Ƶ: Who will and won’t be affected by this research, now and in the future?

Hoffman: For the average practitioner building to code, there isn’t an incentive to use this right now, because it shows you a lot of energy use that is not taken into account in current code. If you really want to know how much energy is being used, it’s a good tool. If you’re just looking to meet the baseline code, you don’t need that additional information.

In the interim, it provides better information for those individuals who are pursuing low-energy buildings – things that are already going beyond the code and need more sophisticated tools to assess the energy consumption of the building.

Eventually, that will come into adoption. I think that at some point, there will be a realignment of what’s expected from a thermal performance perspective.

It takes time for things to be adopted through the code process, but down the road we expect this to form the basis of how energy consumption is modeled and required under the code.

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The California Air Resources Board is studying the emissions of two pieces of hybrid construction machinery – a Caterpillar bulldozer and Komatsu hydraulic excavator. The research will be conducted at the University of California, Riverside through a $2 million grant.

Half of the grant will push 20 to 30 hybrid construction vehicles onto active project sites, and the other $1 million will fund the testing of six vehicles on sites scattered throughout California. Researchers will then compare the performance of the hybrid vehicle to that of conventional diesel powered vehicles.

Manufacturers claim that the hybrid vehicles reduce fuel-use by 20 percent and cut emissions by 30 percent. But hybrids also carry a higher price tag – about 20 percent more than a comparable non-hybrid machine.

The two-year project will evaluate the emission reduction profiles of the vehicles as part of California’s larger effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Oregon is aiming to reduce emissions to 10 percent below 1990 levels by the same year.

The data from the project may contribute to an incentive program aiming to get more contractors to use the hybrid vehicles.

Researchers from the school’s Center for Environmental Research and Technology will monitor the behavior of the vehicles on a second-by-second basis during their use on the construction sites.

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An established green building standard, cutting-edge technology and a research-driven design are being used to create a unique duplex in Southeast Portland.

Because one side of “TrekHaus” is being built to typical Passive House building standards, it will serve as the control; meanwhile, the other side will feature an innovative technology that moderates interior temperatures, particularly during hot days. The experimental side of the duplex will test a wax-like, phase-change material in most interior walls on the second floor.

Overheating is a relatively common complaint among occupants of homes built to the super-insulated Passive House standards, but PCM may improve thermal comfort. The material, which is encased in small packets, becomes solid during cooler hours and melts during warmer hours. TrekHaus will test how much this process impacts residents’ comfort.

Researchers from the Green Building Research Lab at Portland State University, who partnered in project design and construction, are preparing to test thermal comfort and many other elements, according to David Sailor, director of the GBRL.

Homeowners Ella Wong and Randy Hayslip have worked extensively with architect Rob Hawthorne, owner of PDX Living, and Bart Bergquist of Willamette Valley Remodeling to design and build the mirror-image, net-zero-energy townhomes scheduled for completion in early October.

The project incorporates a complex monitoring scheme, including moisture sensors in the walls, heat flux monitoring in the exposed slab, and sensors for indoor air and wall temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide. GBRL researchers and students will collect home performance data for a year, and then analyze what it reveals about the Passive House standard and the specific materials involved in the project.

“By combining this suite of sensors with a whole-building energy computer simulation we will truly gain insight into how the basic Passive House design is performing as well as the extent to which PCM is able to improve the indoor thermal comfort of the building,” said David Sailor, director of the GBRL and a PSU professor.

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In addition to starting work on the Oregon Research Institute building, University of Oregon staffers will begin preparations to update the Riverfront Research Park master plan all together.

The near 30 year old master plan for the Riverfront Research Park will expire in October of 2012 with plenty of space left to develop in the park. University officials, wanting to get ample public involvement, have already started the process of updating it.

The update is needed considering most of the arguments against placing the ORI building on the waterfront were centered on the idea that the master plan was outdated and needed to be revised, taking into account contemporary market conditions, environmental concerns and other factors.

“Beyond the project, the university will launch a master planning process to help address future facilities needs for UO‘s expanding role in catalyzing innovation and its ties to economic development,” said Rich Linton, vice president for research and graduate studies at the university.

Excited about the process, the Associated Students of University of Oregon has approved $56,000 to bring speakers to Eugene who can offer examples of innovative riverfront design and add to the discussion for a new master plan.

Connecting Eugene member Allen Hancock, one of the major opponents of the original ORI site, said he is looking forward to the discussions and hopes the group will be considered a stakeholder.

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When Oregon State University researcher John Gambatese looks at the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, he believes something is missing.

“People need to recognize that sustainability is more than just the environment,” Gambatese said. “It includes safety and health as well.”

In 2004, Gambatese and Sathy Rajendran, now a Hoffman Construction safety specialist, started work on a rating system for construction site safety, modeled partially after LEED. The was launched online recently, and its developers hope to soon leverage support from national organizations to create a full-scale program.

The project began as Rajendran’s doctoral dissertation and was built on research being performed at OSU.

“We performed a study of comparing safety performance of LEED and non-LEED buildings, and found no statistically significant difference,” Gambatese said. He noted that the $9.2 billion CityCenter development in Las Vegas received six LEED certifications, but suffered six worker fatalities in fewer than two years.

“If we are going to identify a building of being sustainable, there needs to be a difference,” he said.

The safety rating system, like LEED, includes a number of required and optional measures that a project team can take to earn credits. As more credits are earned, the rating increases – from one to five stars.

Some of the required items are actions already being taken on many projects, such as job hazard analysis and discussions about contractors’ safety records during selection. Additional credits could come from instituting hearing or respiratory protection programs or requiring Occupational Safety and Health Administration training for all workers.

“Many of the elements can be implemented without higher cost,” Rajendran said. “Cost increases as you go for higher ratings.”

Sustainable Construction Safety and Health certification is available for all kinds of construction projects, including residential and commercial projects – either new buildings or renovations. However, the program is better for design-build or construction manager/general contractor projects than those that use a standard bidding process, said Rajendran, who noted that the integration of safety into design is a major part of the credits system.

Rajendran and Gambatese tested their program on 25 recent construction projects across the country. According to their data, projects that rated higher had a lower instance of “recordable incidents” – injuries and fatalities. The system’s scoring system also was independently reviewed by researchers and industry representatives.

Bart Eberwein, vice president for business development at Hoffman Construction, said that he believes a program like SCSH could bring more attention to construction safety issues.

“What LEED has done is changed the conversation,” Eberwein said. Because LEED has become a ubiquitous program, he said, “I can’t think of a client who hasn’t wanted sustainability to be part of the conversation.”

“If (SCSH) gets elevated to the sexy deal that LEED is, I would support that,” Eberwein said.

The researchers hope their project also can benefit from LEED’s marketing advantages.

“LEED has a built-in market, and we developed a system similar to LEED,” Rajendran said. “If there is an opportunity, (SCSH) could combine with LEED. If not, it could stand alone.”

Gambatese said the next step is to encourage project owners and contractors to use the free evaluation system available . Researchers will use that data to tweak the system and create demonstration case studies.

Rajendran next month will present the rating system to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He said the institute has expressed some interest in adding safety provisions to LEED, and he’s hopeful that an organization such as the American Society of Safety Engineers will “put some muscle” behind the project.

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There’s in which Calvin asks his father how engineers determine load limits for bridges.

His father’s answer: “They drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks. Then they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge.”

That’s not how it works in the real world, of course; however, at Oregon State University, scientists have figured out how to borrow from that idea to improve safety for existing bridges in Oregon – and across the nation.

Civil engineers at the university are using a new technology to test the stress limits and other aspects of a bridge component called a connecting plate.

The plates are a common part of truss bridges around the country. It’s important to study them because if they fail, they have the potential to cause a major disaster, said Chris Higgins, a civil engineering professor at OSU.

“It’s like an airplane crash when a bridge fails in terms of a cataclysmic event,” Higgins said. “This is a large problem. Structures typically fail at connectors, but when we used to study bridges in the past we didn’t look so much at them.”

The technology for testing the connectors uses digital imaging and machine vision to gather specific data about failures that are invisible to the naked eye. Last week, scientists used it to progressively test stresses on a connecting plate by piling weight on it – much like Calvin’s dad’s imaginary plan of exposing a bridge to bigger and bigger trucks.

The data will help bridge engineers across the country and in Oregon ensure that aging bridges are safer and can withstand the stresses they are under today, Higgins added.

An overstressed connecting plate caused the catastrophic Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007, which killed 13 people and injured 145.

That failure brought a lot of attention to the stresses on bridge connectors. It was caused by a deficient design. The plate had distorted before the failure, and then during a repaving project, workers stockpiled material above that weak spot and the bridge collapsed, Higgins said.

“The failure at first appeared to be completely out of the blue,” he said. “That’s why this is an important test. There’s only a limited amount of data around the world on connecting plates like this.”

In Oregon, several hundred of the state’s 2,700 bridges are truss bridges that use connecting plates like the one tested at OSU, said Bruce Johnson, the state bridge engineer.

“A truss is like a Tinkertoy,” he said. “You have steel elements, or bars, connected at node points. You take those steel bars and connect them and the ends together to form triangles.”

One example of that sort of bridge is the Marquam Bridge on Interstate 5 in Portland, which is a cantilever truss bridge, he added.

The Oregon Department of Transportation is already using some of the OSU data to evaluate the state’s many truss bridges. The department has been checking up on the bridges ever since the Minneapolis collapse brought the issue to light, Johnson said.

Last week’s test was the second in a series of tests that Higgins and other researchers plan to perform for the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, which is sponsoring the project.

The first tests will gather data on the baseline strengths of the connecting plates, which are also sometimes called gusset plates. After that, the group will test how the material stands up through corrosion and other environmental stresses.

The final tests will look at some ways to safely shore up plates without the costly process of removing and replacing a significant load-bearing feature of a bridge, Higgins said.

“We’ll probably end up rolling out one test a month or so for the next year,” he said. “In Oregon, our bridges are old, but they tend to be in a bit better shape than (in) states that regularly apply salt to their roads. Of course, we do have the coast here, and the coast provides its own salt.”

ODOT is working in concert with the researchers, and data from the tests pretty much immediately goes into the agency’s maintenance and evaluations of the connecting plates around the state, Johnson said.

“We’re implementing some of Chris’ work continuously as he completes his tests,” Johnson said. “We think there’s a potential to streamline what we’re doing with his research as his work progresses.”

While Oregon doesn’t routinely salt roads, ODOT sometimes does use a liquid material to remove snow in areas like mountain passes. That can cause some stresses to bridge infrastructure, Johnson said.

“We use it sparingly, but it is a salt-like substance,” he said.

Nevertheless, most of the state’s bridges are in good shape, and all of the ones open to traffic are safe, Johnson said.

ODOT found a few bent plates when it started analyzing bridges around the state. Workers are looking at all of the state’s bridge gusset plates, and have cleaned some of them to improve their stability, he added.

“We’re using high-pressure water to blast off corrosion, and we have found some minor amounts of that,” Johnson said. “We haven’t found anything of significant concern yet.”

After corrosion is blasted from a gusset plate, ODOT adds three coats of corrosion-resistant paint to protect it and make it more durable, he said.

With thousands of plates around the state, though, it’s a time-consuming process – and one without much funding. Shoring up existing plates is much cheaper than replacing them with new ones, he said.

It costs $20 per square foot of bridge to clean the plates – and the agency has cleaned one or two plates on a handful of bridges. It costs about $40 per square foot of bridge to remove and replace one, Johnson said.

One goal of the study is to find some new solutions that reduce costs without sacrificing safety, Higgins added.

“It’s not easy to just take one of these things off and replace it – they’re carrying load,” Higgins said. “One of the things we’re looking at is how to strengthen these things by adding material. We think we should have some solutions by the end of this study that could help with that.”

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