SOURCE: ACI 318-11 Structural concrete building code In a response to Bostons Big Dig failure, overhead, horizontal and slanted panels, installed using adhesive anchors, are included in the 2011 concrete standard for the first time. There are radical changes in the works for the concrete design standard of the American Concrete Institute. ACI committee members are about halfway through a six-year overhaul of the 502-page tome, aiming to validate its content and make it more user-friendly. It is the first major revamp in nearly 45 years.In a big departure, the 2014 edition of the ACI 318: Structural Concrete Building Code,
The Council on Tall Buildings & Urban Habitat is vigorously advancing its mission—to help upgrade skyscraper production by offering better design tools and standardizing practice worldwide. In a fundamental shift, the 42-year-old CTBUH is engaging in research, including a $2-million fire study that will culminate in a real building burn.Next year, CTBUH plans to publish five design guidelines on wind-tunnel testing, structural outriggers, performance-based seismic design, column shortening, foundations and natural ventilation. “There is a need for better tall buildings around the world,” said Antony Wood, CTBUH's executive director, at the CTBUH 2011 World Conference in Seoul. The Oct. 10-12
Photo by Nadine Post for ENR Since Antony Wood joined the council in 2006, firm membership has quadrupled. Antony Wood has been the executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat since October 2006. Wood, 41, is also a professor of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, which is where the council is headquartered. Last year, he earned his Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Nottingham, where he taught before he relocated to Chicago to lead the council. His Oct. 12 interview with ENR at the CTBUH Seoul World Conference, which was held
The American Society of Civil Engineers has decided that emergency changes to wind-load provisions in ASCE's 2010 building design standard are not needed. ASCE recently reviewed the provisions, prompted by a red flag raised by structural engineer-researcher Emil Simiu, who says the wind standard is flawed and needlessly complex. SIMIUInconsistencies in chapters 26-31 of the 608-page “Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures: ASCE/SEI 7-10” can result in “unconservative” designs, says Simiu, a member of the 2010 standard's subcommittee on wind loads. “Some buildings can be produced that do not meet the intended risk levels implicit in the standard,”
Related Links: An Unprecedented 11 Partners Propel Integrated Project Delivery at $320-million California Hospital Sutter's Improved Relational Contract on Its Way The steel contractor for Sutter Medical Center, Castro Valley, was not invited to join the 11-party relational contract as a partner. But Herrick Corp. did sign on for preconstruction services and a negotiated contract, in support of the $320-million hospital's integrated form of agreement.And like the partners, Herrick opened its books. “We also established a target price,” which included profit and changed as the scope increased, says Robert Hazleton, vice president of the Stockton, Calif.-based Herrick. HAZELTON“If we under-ran
Related Links: Hospital's Steel Contractor Collaborates without Signing a Relational Contract Sutter's Improved Relational Contract on Its Way Prior to the $320-million Castro Valley project, Sutter Health's Digby R. Christian had never managed a hospital job, let alone one with a relational contract.But that isn't stopping him from making integrated project delivery history in earthquake-prone California and in the U.S. For the 230,000-sq-ft Sutter Medical Center, Castro Valley near San Francisco, Christian skipped over the baby steps of IPD with a tri-party agreement and went straight to IPD with an unprecedented 11 partners sharing risk and reward.“I wanted to be
Related Links: An Unprecedented 11 Partners Propel Integrated Project Delivery at $320-million California Hospital Sutter Health, a pioneer in integrated project delivery, will soon release a revamped relational-contract form. The Sacramento-based non-profit healthcare system, in the midst of a $5.5-billion capital program, is culling lessons learned from its IPD projects to improve the form, making it more user-friendly. The form will also integrate building information modeling into the main agreement.The basic underlying philosophy of the integrated form of agreement (IFOA) will stay the same, says Howard W. Ashcraft, a partner in Hanson Bridgett LLP, San Francisco, which is Sutter's outside
Never mind her asthma, Carla Bonacci recalls thinking on Sept. 11, 2001, after her PATH train from New Jersey got diverted from her World Trade Center stop to a station about a mile north.The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey manager, seeing smoke billowing from the 110-story twin towers of the WTC, raced toward the infernos. She was hell-bent on getting to her team, housed on two floors high in the north tower. Just before she made her destination, the south tower collapsed. To her, it sounded like a bomb and brought back vivid memories of the first
Bottom Photo by Nadine M. Post for ENR DETERMINED On 9/11, Lyons, wearing his firefighter-brothers spare gear, went looking for him at Ground Zero. Lyons has worked there since. Related Links: Witnesses to 9/11, Devoted to Rebuilding World Trade Center At New York's New World Trade Center, Uncommon Cooperation Brian Lyons, 51, has worked on 10 projects at Ground Zero. The man is on a personal crusade to rebuild the World Trade Center “bigger and better than before.” His mission was born on 9/11, when he made his way to Ground Zero to look for his 32-year-old brother—a firefighter with
Photo by Gustavo J. Parra-Montesinos Orthogonal layouts of shear stud reinforcing at slab-column connections in flat-plate concrete frames do not perform well, says researcher. Photo by Gustavo J. Parra-Montesinos A researcher suggests radial layouts should replace orthogonal layouts of shear stud reinforcing at slab-column connections in flat-plate concrete frames. Related Links: Healthy Doses of Steel Fiber Clear Rebar Congestion Structural designers say there is cause for concern but no reason to panic over research that indicates potential for premature failure of flat-plate concrete frames reinforced at slab-column connections with a popular shear-studs-on-a-rail detail.Engineers estimate that in seismic zones alone there