Following the ASCE Annual Business Meeting, tours will depart from the Westin Chicago hotel. Three tour options are available.  Attendees will have the opportunity to tour Chicago’s unique Architecture history by boat and by foot, a tour of Chicago’s “Green Roofs”, or a tour of the ASCE award winning “Tunnel and Reservoir Plan” by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. Choose from one of the three detailed below. Subject to change, times approximate. 

A modest fee of $15 will be charged to offset costs. Please mark the registration form accordingly for the number of tickets you are requesting. No refunds will be made for cancellations received after Friday, September 30, 2006.

Architectural Boat and Walking Tour

A combined architectural boat and walking tour has been arranged with the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

The first part of the tour will begin by boat at 1:00 pm with the Architecture River Cruise as you marvel at Chicago’s soaring towers while enjoying a 90-minute, narrated river cruise that spotlights more than 50 architecturally significant sites where you will discover a new perspective on the city of Chicago. You will ride on either Chicago's First Lady or Chicago's Little Lady ship where open-air and indoor seating will add comfort to your journey. The cruise begins at Wacker and Michigan Avenue, a short walk from the hotel.

From there, you will then stroll down Michigan Avenue for a 3:00 pm tour to learn about Chicago’s skyscrapers on the Loop Architecture Walking Tour of Historic Skyscrapers.  Chicago is not only the birthplace of the skyscraper--it is also where most of the innovations in early skyscraper design and technology originated! Take a step back in time for an informative look at some of our world famous early skyscrapers including: Burnham and Root’s Rookery (1888) with its Moorish revival exterior and recently restored Frank Lloyd Wright interior; Adler and Sullivan’s Auditorium Building (1889) a masterpiece of engineering, design and acoustics; Holabird and Roche’s Marquette Building (1895) an outstanding example of the Chicago School of design; and Holabird and Root’s Chicago Board of Trade Building (1930), one of the city’s most glamorous Art Deco skyscrapers.  The tour will commence from 224 S. Michigan Avenue and lasts approx. 2 hours.

City of Chicago “Green Roof” Tour

As of June 2004, more than 80 municipal and private green roofs totaling more than 1 million square feet were in various stages of installation in Chicago.  Green roofs improve air quality, conserve energy, reduce stormwater runoff and help reduce the urban heat island effect.  Because it believes so strongly in the benefits of green roofs, the City of Chicago adopted a policy that encourages and, in some cases, requires green roofs in developments undergoing City review.  The City has installed a number of green roofs on its own buildings. The first municipal green roof in the country, the City Hall rooftop garden, is probably the best-known green roof in Chicago.

Beginning at 11:00 am (bus leaves the hotel at 10:30 am), the first stop will be the Chicago Center for Green Technology located at 445 North Sacramento Boulevard in Chicago.  The Chicago Center for Green Technology is:

• A model for the nation:  Chicago Green Tech is only the third building in the United States to be designed according to the LEED rating system using the highest standards of green technology available. It is the only one of the three that is a renovation of an existing building and the only one accessible by public transportation.
• Home to organizations and businesses committed to the environment. Tenants who occupy Chicago Green Tech provide environmental products and services. Greencorps Chicago, the city's community gardening and job training program and WRD Environmental, an urban landscape company, all have offices at Chicago Green Tech.
• A place to learn. Chicago Green Tech's building and campus are open for visitors to explore and to learn how green buildings are people and good for the environment. Visitors leave knowing how to incorporate environmentally friendly, cost saving features into their home or business.

The next stop on this tour will be the Green Apartment Building that is under construction at Division and Clybourn.  The building is being constructed by a non-profit that serves the homeless - Mercy Housing Lakefront.

• Near North SRO, the newest project of Mercy Housing Lakefront (MHL) will combine cost effective and nationally recognized approach to ending and preventing homelessness with major design innovations in an important community setting.
• Near North SRO is being constructed in the Near North neighborhood, an area once dominated by the Cabrini-Green public housing project. The building is part of a larger City of Chicago plan to create a mixed-income community with newly constructed affordable rental units, single family homes and commercial space.
• Renowned architect Helmut Jahn is designing Near North SRO. With his fresh take on traditional single-room-occupancy layout concepts and MHL's commitment to green design, Near North SRO will set new standards for sustainability and energy efficiency in the field of affordable housing.
• Near North SRO will generate a portion of its own power with wind turbines, harness solar energy through solar thermal collectors as well as collect and recycle rainwater in cisterns. The building will also feature the city's first gray water system which recycles shower water to use when flushing toilets.
• Near North SRO is scheduled to open in February 2007.

The last stop is anticipated to be the Rooftop Garden at City Hall or at Millennium Park.  In fact, the portion of Millennium Park atop the Millennium Park parking garage IS a green roof!

Number of participants in this tour is limited (30 people max.).

Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) Mainstream Pumping Station and Reservoir Tour

10:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Chicago proved itself as a clean water pioneer a hundred years ago when we reversed the flow of the river to keep sewage out of the lake. Now we're using the unique tunnel and reservoir technology to keep the waterways clean.  In the mid 1960’s the storm sewers of Chicago had reached their capacity.  Ordinary rainfalls would flood the basements of thousands each year.  The problem escalated to the point that the City would release polluted water from the combined sewers into the local waterways.  The worsening combined sewer overflow (CSO) severely polluted area waterways resulting in river back flows to Lake Michigan, closing beaches.

After numerous studies by many agencies the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC) proposed TARP or the “Deep Tunnel”.  TARP consisted of 52 cities and villages including the City of Chicago serving nearly 3.5 million people.  The District officially adopted the project in 1972.  TARP would be broken up into two phases of construction, which began in 1975.  Phase I would consist of 109.2 miles of deep tunnels ranging from 9 to 33 feet in diameter and from 150 to more than 300 feet in depth with over 250 drop shafts and was primarily for pollution control.  Phase II consisted of reservoirs primarily for flood control for the Chicagoland combined sewer area, but will considerably enhance pollution control benefit being provided under Phase I.  Consisting of three large reservoirs the Phase II plan is called the Chicagoland Underflow Plan (CUP) and is being designed and constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Mainstream Pumping Station, located in Hodgkins, Illinois, is one of three stations in the Tunnel and Reservoir Project designed to capture combined sewer overflows from an area of 375 square miles.  The Mainstream Tunnel System consists of 31 miles of tunnels, 13 to 33 feet in diameter and 240 to 300 feet below ground. It extends from Wilmette, Illinois, in the north to McCook, Illinois, at its southern end.

The tour will leave the hotel at 10:00 am and take you to the Mainstream Pumping Station in Hodgkins, Illinois along with the reservoir across the interstate which is one of the three reservoirs that is a part of the system.  A box lunch will be provided.

The final leg of the tour will be of one of the five Sidestream Elevated Pool Aeration (SEPA) stations along the Calumet River and the Cal-Sag Channel.  Each SEPA station provides additional oxygen to the waterways, providing a healthier environment for fish and other aquatic life.

The TARP project won the ASCE Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award (OCEA) in 1986 and the SEPA project won the OCEA in 1994.  Come see and learn about these two important projects in the Chicagoland area.

Number of participants in this tour is limited (30 people max.).

Attendees will be broken into two groups and one group will start at Trump Tower while the other group will start with the Bridge Tour.  Both sites are within walking distance of the hotel.  After the approx. one hour tour, you will then walk over for the other tour.  The first tour session will begin on the site at 2:30 pm and the second session will begin at 4:00 pm.

These tours are sure to be a fun and enriching experience for all, showing off some of the best civil engineering projects that Chicago has to offer!

Trump Tower Construction

Chicago is famous for many things but none is more visible and striking than the city’s architecture, a display of both modern and classic designs with one thing in common:  they all reach for the sky.  Chicago gave birth to the skyscraper in 1885 with the 10-story Home Insurance Building, sparking a revolution in the design and construction of tall buildings.  This revolution reached its culmination in Chicago with the completion of the Sears Tower in 1973.  Today, the next step is the Trump International Hotel & Tower, under construction since March 17, 2005.

This new skyscraper is being built on the site of the former headquarters of the Chicago Sun-Times and has already gained much notoriety in Chicago.  After building around 50 models and making two major design revisions, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill released their final design.  With this design, the tower manages to complement its surroundings while still standing out from the crowd.  The south side of the tower faces the Chicago River and runs parallel to its bank.  Running up the sides of the tower, three major setbacks provide visual continuity in relation to neighboring structures.  The first setback occurs on the east side of the tower, in line with the cornice line of the Wrigley Building to the east.  The second setback occurs on the west side of the tower, in line with Marina City to the west.  The third and final setback appears on the east side of the tower and relates to the roofline of the IBM Building across the street.  When viewed from the south, the tower’s riverfront façade and these three offsets further relate to the Wrigley Building’s staggered appearance.  The tower’s silvery color also forms a transition between the bright white terra cotta of the Wrigley Building and the black steel and glass of the IBM Building.

Scheduled for completion in 2008, the tower will sit at 1,362 feet tall and contain 92 floors, housing 472 super-luxury residential condominiums and 286 five-star luxury hotel condominium guest rooms.  The building will also break the record for the world’s highest residence, currently held by the John Hancock Center since 1969.

This tour of the tower’s construction site will be conducted by representatives from Bovis Lend Lease, the Construction Manager.  Hard hats and safety glasses will be required for this tour.  If you have them, bring them along.  If not, they will be provided for use on the tour.

Chicago's Moveable Bridges

In the Civil Engineering profession, bridges are some of the most celebrated and recognizable of structures.  This is certainly the case in Chicago, famous for its many movable bridges.  In fact, Chicago has more movable bridges than any other city in the world and the city has long been recognized for its innovation in bridge engineering.  Most of these movable bridges are trunnion bascule-type bridges, also known as the Chicago-type Bascule, since this design was developed in Chicago in 1899.  These bridges have two cantilevered leaves that lock together in the center when in the down position.  When a bridge has to be opened up, usually for ships passing on the river below, a bridge tender unlocks the bridge and each leaf rotates about its trunnion until it reaches the up position.  The leaves are balanced about the trunnion by huge counterweight bays, located at the tail end of each leaf below the roadway.  These counterweights rotate down into a pit beneath the bridge approach when the bridge is opened. 

This unique, balanced design requires much less energy to open and close the bridge than other movable bridge types.  It also allows ship traffic to use the entire width of the river when passing, solving the problem of common collisions associated with swing bridges that rotated on a large pier in the middle of the river.  The efficiency of this design also allowed the trusses to be set at banister height and, after further refinement, eventually moved underneath the road deck altogether, contributing to each bridge’s aesthetic appeal.

The first Chicago-style Bascule Bridge was opened in 1902 at Cortland Street (known as Clybourn Place back then) and is still in operation today.  This bridge was the first of its kind to be awarded landmark status by the American Society of Civil Engineers, granted in October, 1989.  This tour will take you inside the Lake Street Bridge, located on the Chicago River’s Main Branch, next to where it meets the North Branch.  The Lake Street Bridge was opened on November 6, 1916 and is unique in that it carries a CTA Elevated Rail line above the road deck, where Green Line trains cross into and out of the Loop.  On this tour, you will learn about the mechanics of how Chicago-type Bascule Bridges operate as well as the history of how these bridges came to be.  The tour will be led by leadership within the City of Chicago Department of Transportation Bureau of Bridges.