The Watertown Arsenal was established in 1816 and the building Alpine was working on was built circa 1915 in response to the increased demand of World War I. Over 100 years of paint needed to be removed from thousands of feet of steel structural members to make way for new steel reinforcements and additional welding in order to bring the structure up to current building code. One of the main challenges Alpine faced with the Arsenal Yards project was, due to the magnitude and tight schedule of the overall project, we had to choreograph the abatement process for our crew of 12 to get our work done safely without impacting dozens of workers from other trades. Our work took over 3 months as we made our way across the 80,000 SF – almost 2 acre – floorplan. The other trades included steelworkers, welders, masons and demolition techs.
