Construction begins on Hudson Yards' $700-million Eastern Platform NYC Hudson Yards Developers Name Tutor Perini as Contractor, Form JV with Tishman Rolling trains underfoot. Around-the-clock operations. Caissons needled in between tracks. Hundreds of work-arounds to avoid tunnels and buried utilities. Track-outage hopscotch. Two-hour work windows. Sudden schedule changes. Constant scrutiny. Deadline pressure.The 11.2-million-sq-ft first phase of Manhattan's 17.4-million-sq-ft Hudson Yards—a 28-acre minicity on
Related Links: Skills Shortage Challenges New Zealand Earthquake Rebuild Teams Mobilize to Rescue Survivors, Assess Damage in Nepal Seismic researchers say they have found a number of worrying anomalies in how mid-rise and high-rise buildings with reinforced concrete frames behaved during the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes near Christchurch, New Zealand.“Many plastic hinge zones in reinforced concrete beams of multistory buildings performed unexpectedly,” says Charles Clifton, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Auckland. “It was seen that a few wide cracks developed, rather than the expected large number of hairline cracks.” As a result, the embedded
Related Links: Leslie E. Robertson Associates Diller Scofidio + Renfro Sciame Construction Gensler Find the load paths. That could have been structural engineer Daniel A. Sesil's mantra while seeking support for the daring southern portion of Columbia University Medical Center's 15-story Medical and Graduate Education Building in Upper Manhattan.Though it encloses only about 100,000 sq ft, the $77-million base building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has a split personality. The northern section is conventional. In dramatic contrast, the southern side is brazenly asymmetrical. DS+R describes the mind-bending form as a glass-enclosed "cascade" of interconnected study and social spaces that
Related Links: Best of the Best 2014 With demand rising for its H-47 Chinook heavy-lift military helicopter, the Boeing Co. sought to increase production and efficiency at its Ridley Park, Pa., campus while maintaining ongoing operations. The resulting five-year Chinook H-47 Focus Factory Conversion Program transformed the company's historic 85-year-old industrial helicopter production complex through several major capital renovation, modernization and new construction projects.More than 1,500 construction workers logged nearly 750,000 hours without disrupting the existing facility's 24-hour, seven-days-a-week assembly operations—often working less than 20 ft from a temporary demising wall. When completed in April 2014, the project boasted a
Related Links: Best of the Best 2014 ENR Northwest Best Projects Spending several days per week on site to resolve issues as they arose during erection, teams of designers took to the field during construction of the University of Oregon's 145,000-sq-ft Hatfield-Dowlin complex, home to an array of spaces for college football's Oregon Ducks. Prior to that, the design team crisscrossed the country to evaluate both college and professional sports facilities and used their observations to inform the programming and design of Hatfield-Dowlin, a facility that hosts weight rooms, video theaters, a player's lounge and a "war room" for Oregon's
Industry professionals from across the U.S. donated their time and expertise to help ENR identify and honor the pinnacle achievements in design and construction, reviewing projects completed in the U.S. and Puerto Rico between June 2013 and June 2014.
While constructing Clemson University's $110-million wind-energy test center in North Charleston, S.C., the project owner and its builders were often working toward a "moving target."
Related Links: Best of the Best 2014 Builders Solve Calatrava's Florida Polytechnic Puzzle Soaring Polytechnic Project Lets Builders Stand Tall During construction of Florida Polytechnic University's $60-million Innovation Science and Technology Building—which more closely resembles a flying saucer than a citadel of learning—the flappable wings ruled. Santiago Calatrava, the designer of the iconic building and its sun-tracking shading system, challenged the building team to remain unflappable while wrestling with the 300,000-sq-ft job's operable rooftop louvers and other complex features, all the time maintaining quality, schedule and budget.The two-story elliptical-in-plan building is the signature architectural element of the new 171-acre campus
Photos courtesy of ODOT Photo & Video Services The 2,000-ft-long Interstate 5 Willamette Bridge is Oregon's largest single-arch span. Its construction called for complex logistics and close collaboration under a delivery method known as construction management/general contracting. Related Links: Best of the Best 2014 ENR Northwest Project of the Year While executing construction of the $152-million Interstate 5 Willamette River Bridge, project team members detoured into unfamiliar territory. The 2,000-ft-long span, bordering Eugene and Springfield, Ore., is not only the state's largest single-arch span but also one of only a handful of U.S. transportation projects to forgo traditional delivery for
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