Best Interior/Tenant Improvement — Indeed Tower Tenant Improvement

INDEED TOWER TENANT IMPROVEMENT

Austin

BEST PROJECT

Submitted by: PR Construction

OWNER Indeed Inc.

LEAD DESIGN FIRM Perkins & Will

GENERAL CONTRACTOR DPR Construction

In addition to serving as the core and shell contractor on this 39-story Class A office building in downtown Austin’s Central Business District, DPR Construction was also selected for the build-out of 10 levels within Indeed’s office and employee amenity areas.

The first-generation interior finish-out of office space on Levels 27-36 covers about 330,000 sq ft and consisted of office space, a conference center, full break area including kitchen and cafeteria, fitness center and a mezzanine floor with features such as a game room and movie theater, plus rooftop/outdoor spaces. The building also features 10 floors interconnected by stairs, helping to promote cohesion between the different work and play spaces.

Completed on time and under budget in August 2023, the project required navigating a busy site populated with other general contractors working on build-outs of other floors and areas inside the building.

This led to some competition for freight elevator time, creating some delivery challenges. To better manage this situation, DPR shared an in-house calendar scheduling app with the other GCs working on the site as well as with the building’s engineering team to coordinate deliveries, dumpster swaps and the use of the loading dock and freight elevator.

Photo by Andrea Callo

The project team’s use of a combination of design-assist and prefabrication enabled materials to arrive on site early, reducing waste and thereby minimizing both onsite labor and workflow traffic jams.

Building the mezzanine floor involved delivering steel beams with the freight elevator to support the floor, splicing them together to their designed length and then installing metal decking and rebar.

Placing concrete also proved to be a marathon task. After receiving concrete trucks at the loading dock on Level 1, for example, concrete was transferred into manual concrete buggies that fit in the elevator up to the 36th floor, then delivered by conveyor belt up to the newly created mezzanine floor, with the process repeating for approximately 20 hours.

Photo by Andrea Callo

With robust virtual design and construction (VDC) programs serving as a data set, the Dusty Robot was used as a robotic solution to perform layout of walls, ceilings and doors with millimeter precision. Paired with an operator, the project team found that the use of the Dusty Robot proved to be roughly five times faster at performing layout than a typical two-person crew. This translated to schedule savings and allowed foremen to focus their valuable time on moving work forward.

The team also used the SmartTagIt application, which provided valuable data and analytics to keep the project on schedule with no impact on quality.

Sustainable design elements included energy efficient mechanical systems, daylight harvesting and occupancy sensors to reduce lighting needs. The project also diverted 70% of its construction waste from landfills by recycling a total of 205 tons of material. Combined, these efforts helped the improvement project achieve LEED Gold certification.