Look, up in the sky! It's two alums inspecting buildings and bridges!

Alumni

10/1/2026

For decades, a day on the job for Kent Diebolt ’82 and Evan Kopelson ’94 has meant being suspended on ropes from skyscrapers, capitol buildings, church towers, bridges, and other structures, hundreds of feet above the ground.

At Vertical Access, the company Diebolt founded, the two specialize in using climbing techniques to go where most people can’t—or wouldn’t want to—so they can inspect some of the structures’ hardest-to-reach parts.

As partners in the Ithaca-area company, Diebolt and Kopelson have spent years examining buildings and bridges up close—searching for cracks, loose masonry, water damage, and other signs of deterioration that can be impossible to spot from the ground.

“It’s a little bit like your annual physical,” says Diebolt. “Buildings should be looked at periodically.”

Projects over the years have included the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, the Chrysler Building and St. Thomas Church in NYC, Philadelphia City Hall, the Massachusetts and Nebraska state capitols, and the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston, SC.Closer to home, Vertical Access has inspected several buildings on the Hill, including Sibley, McGraw, and Myron Taylor halls.

For Kopelson—who majored in classical civilization and archaeology in Arts & Sciences before earning a master’s in historic preservation from Penn—working up close with iconic structures keeps the job interesting.

Read the full story on the Cornellians website.