Texas & SoutheastTexas & Southeast Construction News

Engineering the Relaunch of NASA's Historic VAB

Top Trends to Watch in 2015 — A view of a section of an existing assembly platform, prior to removal.

Image courtesy NASA

Remove and Replace

Before installing the new platform, though, it's out with the old. According to Starr, the entire process took about eight months. For much of that time, crews were upgrading the old platform system's structural integrity—a necessity before removing it in "chunks."

Installation of the new system, on the other hand, should be "a pretty orchestrated endeavor," Starr says. There are more than a dozen facilities manufacturing various components, with final offsite assembly taking place less than 30 miles from the VAB. Each platform half will be delivered to the site via flatbed trailer.

Currently, the team is planning on one to two days to set each platform half, with total system installation scheduled as a "roughly two-month process," says Starr. Final project completion is set for fall 2016.

Scott Judy is ENR’s Managing Editor. His roughly 34 years as a construction journalist began with an 11-year stint visiting and writing about construction projects in the Midwest region of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. Then, in 2000, Judy helped launch ENR Southeast, now known as ENR Texas & Southeast. After all these years, Judy says his favorite part of being an ENR editor is visiting job sites and learning how—and reporting on—a team’s approach to overcoming the project’s design and construction challenges. And Judy says he never turns down an invitation for a project visit.