Office/Retail/Mixed-Use: Best Project and Safety: Award of Merit
TRT Holdings Headquarters is a 345,000-sq-ft, build-to-suit, Class A office building that includes six floors totaling 170,195 sq ft of office space and a two-level, 174,137-sq-ft, below-grade parking deck. Brasfield & Gorrie led construction on the design-build project, located on the historic Old Parkland Hospital campus in Dallas.
Major thoroughfares and an occupied office complex bordered the project site, creating a variety of obstacles for storage and laydown. To overcome this, the project team carefully scheduled deliveries to create as little need for storage as possible. In addition, approximately 85,000 cu yd of contaminated soil on the site were carefully tested and removed during mass excavation for the below-grade parking structure.
The building's complex skin features intricate masonry and stonework. An aggressive schedule required that the masonry skin and a significant masonry site package be constructed on all four sides of the building simultaneously, and at the same time as the single-story dining hall. Site constraints required moving the masons' staging and cast stone delivery areas at predetermined dates so the masonry work would not be impeded and other trades could also work in the same area.
Meanwhile, waterproofing of the concrete structure over the below-grade parking deck had to be coordinated daily with the location of cranes installing the cast stone on the building. This allowed the waterproofing and masonry trades to work concurrently. Daily preplanning and coordination meetings with the entire construction team helped to ensure that work by each of the subcontractors was not impeded.
Construction teams recorded 250,000 total man-hours, with no lost-time or recordable incidents. All employees and jobsite visitors followed Brasfield & Gorrie's safety program, which provides standards for communication, training, meetings, equipment inspection and avoiding risks.
At the project's start, Brasfield & Gorrie and each subcontractor had to compose a detailed safety-risk and hazard-assessment plan based on the specifics of the jobsite. Before work began, thorough pre-installation safety meetings were held with subcontractors on an individual basis.
Jobsite safety training classes taught by Brasfield & Gorrie's regional safety director included topics such as trenching and excavation, fall protection, swing stages, hazardous materials and ladders and scaffolding.
A toolbox safety meeting was held weekly for both Brasfield & Gorrie workers and all subs participating in the job, while project manager and superintendent safety inspection walks were conducted with all subcontractors on a regular basis.
Key Players
General Contractor Brasfield & Gorrie LLC, Dallas
Owner TRT Holdings, Dallas
Lead Design HKS Inc., Dallas
