604-294-5330

Children’s Medical Center

  • Date: 2004
  • Place: Dallas, Texas

About this Project

On October 11th, 2003, Craniofacial surgeons Kenneth Salyer, M.D., and David Genecov, M.D. set their skills to work separating conjoined twins Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim. World wide attention was focused on the medical center including an impressive media contingent on site waiting for news about the progress of the two-year old boys.

A week previous the hospital itself underwent emergency surgery… to replace 200 feet of collapsed 6″ sewer lines. The access point for this operation was the central courtyard, right where the media would be located a week later to cover the high-profile operation of the twins!

A unique challenge with this job was that access to the courtyard was narrow and inaccessible to traditional heavy equipment. unless it were to be lifted in by helicopter. Pipe Genie systems are lightweight, collapsible and therefore portable and were able to be hand-carried into the courtyard worksite.

This was a short-time, critical job that required crews to be working round-the-clock. The courtyard surfacing had to be removed and a 20 foot deep pit needed to be hand-dug and shored in highly compacted soil. Because the sewer line was completely collapsed, rods had to be punched through in order to run chain for the pull.

Restrictive access to the worksite.

Manually dug, 20′ deep pit with sectional shoring in place.
Creating a tunnel to the basement wall and
pulling unit lowered into place.
Working round-the-clock to meet a critical deadline.
Pulling operation underway and proceeding smoothly.
Chain pulling bursting/splitting cone through collapsed lines with new pipe following behind.
Finishing up the pull and getting ready
to close the wound!
Closing up!
Children’s Medical Center is back to normal in time to greet the world and the press, and successfully separate the two little boys.
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