Tunnel Overhead Inspections

Since the Tunnels in Boston are congested during most hours of the day inspections which require lane closures need to be done between 10pm and 5am. The typical closures we have been working in go out at 11pm and we need to be out of the closure by 4am.

This doesn’t leave us a lot of time to finish out inspections so we are usually very organized and prepared to inspect before we enter the closure. Most notes are refined down to a check list and previous tables of deficiencies are used to keep track of changes. Since our inspections for this assignment are just overhead inspections we spend a great deal of time looking at the lighting supports, panels and hangers. We look at all the overhead items but these tend to be the elements which have the most notable deficiencies. We also need to inspect the hangers which are located in the exhaust plenum. The exhaust plenums are often very dirty and cover us in soot, which is why we wear tyvek suits to protect our fancy field clothes.