Just the weight of all the clothing needed to stay warm while working in the cold can drain energy, say crews working on Watson and English department buildings
So you think you’re happy it’s spring?
As the temperature begins to rise, construction workers on campus will shed the layers of clothing they’ve worn all winter for protection against the frigid air of their outdoor workplace.
Almost any route Brown faculty and staff took to their offices during the cold months wound past construction sites teeming with people.
Through rain, snow and biting cold, as many as 140 people worked outside each winter day on two building projects: the Watson Institute for International Studies at the corner of Thayer and Charlesfield streets, and English department expansion on the corner of Brown and Angell streets.
Although construction schedules were sometimes interrupted by the elements in years past, the work is now a 12-month-a-year venture. As evidence of progress made during the winter at Brown, both buildings had "topping out" celebrations — the ceremonial raising of the final beam to complete the structural skeleton — during the cold season.
Those who have been outside every day this winter called it a wet, if not excessively cold, season. But winter is by far the hardest season for working outside, according Bill Weikert, a laborer with R.P. Iannuccillo & Sons Construction Co. of Providence.
"It’s brutal really," said Weikert. "The danger is getting walking pneumonia … I take a lot of Vitamin C in the winter."
Weikert filled the back of his pickup truck with extra clothes each morning before he left Middletown for Providence to work on the new Watson Institute; layering clothing was essential to keeping warm.
On the coldest of days, many laborers wore layers of long underwear, jeans and sweatshirts under coveralls. The full bodysuit coveralls provided enough warmth to allow a worker to operate in temperatures as low as minus 10 to minus 20 degrees, said James Sisson, construction manager for Brown’s facilities management.
To keep their hands and feet dry and warm, the workers wore a variety of insulated and waterproof boots and a new line of gloves, much like gloves used by athletes in the NFL, said Sisson. Most also used a standard hardhat winter liner to keep their heads and neck warm and protect against the loss of body heat.
Just the weight of all of those clothes can drain a person’s energy, according to Mark LaPlante, a steamfitter with McNulty Co. "You’re carrying a lot more weight in clothes and when they get wet, they get heavier."
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s the skeletons of Brown’s two new buildings went up on opposite ends of campus, some work, such as pouring concrete, required that the air be heated. In those cases, the structures were temporarily shrouded so that heat could be pumped in, raising the temperature to about 40 degrees, said Sisson.Although that may sound like a good thing, workers said the procedure means they have to add layers of clothing, then take them off to acclimate to the different temperatures.
But a shrouded building doesn’t mean it’s warm inside. In fact, sometimes it was colder inside structures than outside, said LaPlante.
Electrical apprentice Tina Rogers definitely looks forward to warmer weather. For Rogers, winter mornings began at 5 in the inky darkness when she tuned in a weather report to determine what to wear that day.
"The winter takes a lot more out of you," said Rogers, who works for State Electric Inc. She is generally so tired of fighting off the cold by the end of the day that "I go home and shut the door and don’t go out again."
Although spring officially arrived March 20, Weikert produced his chapped hands as evidence that the cold is not long gone.
Yet even on the most numbing winter days, Weikert would not trade the outdoor job for the climate-controlled comfort of an office.
"No way," said Weikert. "A lot of us work construction because we like being outside better than being stuck inside."