In Bangalore, India, an EPC contractor is wrapping up a 13-month-long project to build a $112-million, 10-story, 621,000-sq-ft office building for an undisclosed client. It was constructed with a top-down building system that has been used only a few times since it was patented as “suspended building construction” 46 years ago—including once recently on an adjacent site for the same owner.
A patent for the method is now held by Charles H. Thornton, retired founder and former chairman of Thornton Tomasetti. He has formed TGE LLC, with partners Jeff Grillo, an owner’s executive, and Dan Esparza, a veteran industry entrepreneur, to market it. Thornton witnessed delivery of one of the first buildings to use the method in 1973 and spent several years working with its inventor, the late David Termohlen, a 1971 ENR Newsmaker, in an unsuccessful attempt to develop a global market for what TGE now calls “Top-Down Construction.”