Good afternoon, and welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is Design Opportunities for Total Precast and Affordable Housing. I'm Becky Misadja, the Education Manager at PCI, and I will be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenter for today, I have a few introductory items to note. Next slide. Earlier today, we sent a reminder email to all registered attendees. The email contained a webinar attendance sign-in sheet, a guide to downloading your Certificate of Continuing Education, and a PDF of today's presentation. The handouts are also available now and can be found in the handout section located near the bottom of your GoToWebinar toolbox. If there are multiple listeners at your location, please circulate the attendance sheet and send the completed sign-in sheet back to PCI per the instructions on the form. The attendance sheet is only to be used at locations with multiple listeners. If you're the only person viewing on your computer, there is no need to complete an attendance sheet. We already have your information. If you cannot download the handouts, please email PCIMarketing at marketing at pci.org as shown on your screen. Note that all attendee lines are muted. The GoToWebinar toolbox is an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, please type it into the questions pane, where I'll be keeping track of them and read to the presenter during the Q&A portion. Also a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI Learning Center. Next slide. PCI is a registered provider of AIA CES and has met the requirements of the AIA Continuing Education System and can offer one learning unit, HSW, for this presentation. Any questions about the content of this webinar should be directed to PCI. Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to CES records for AIA members. Questions related to specific products or publications will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Next slide. PCI has met the standards and requirements of the Registered Continuing Education Program and we can offer one PDH credit for this presentation. Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to RCEP.net. A certificate of completion will be issued to each participant. As such, it does not include content that may be deemed or construed to be an approval or an endorsement by RCEP. With hundreds of attendees for our webinars, it's impractical to prepare individual certificates. As PCI has met the standards and requirements of the Registered Continuing Education Program, we will upload attendance data to RCEP.net within 10 days and you can print your certificates of continuing education. Next slide. The learning objectives for this webinar include understanding the design process between architect and precaster when the precaster is involved early on. Learning how perceived constraints of precast construction can create opportunities for the architectural design and construction team. Supporting architectural vision, construction efficiency, and reduction in construction deficits. Seeing how different affordable housing project case studies integrated precast into their design for better long-term building durability, performance, and energy efficiency. And how to achieve faster speed to market to benefit not just the owner, but also deliver a needed building to a community faster. I will now turn the controls over to Auggie Chung, VP of Sales at Wells. Auggie Chung Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the PCI webinar. My name is Auggie Chung and I'll be presenting this webinar with Tyler Brown and Matt McGrane of Land & Bone Baker Architects, LBVA for short. I am currently the Vice President of Sales for Wells Great Lakes Division. I've been in the precast and commercial real estate business for over 25 years. I work out of the Naperville, Illinois office and I've done a lot of total precast projects. Next, I'd like to introduce Tyler Brown. Tyler is an Ohio native and University of Cincinnati grad with over 25 years of experience for architecture and planning offices, public agencies, and construction. Tyler is a principal at LBVA focusing on large-scale affordable housing development, leveraging his expertise in precast concrete systems. Today he'll share insights on notable affordable housing work. Also presenting along with Tyler is Matt McGrane. Matt is a Senior Project Architect at LBVA with a career focused on user-centered design, research, and advocacy. In his current role, Matt leads sustainable, equitable projects that prioritize environmental preservation and serve underserved communities. Significant accomplishments include being named AIA Chicago Young Architect of the Year in 2018 and named a Crane Chicago Leader in Sustainability in 2024. Matt will examine the constraints and opportunities for total precast buildings and affordable housing during this presentation. Before we get started about the design process and affordable housing project case studies, we'll share with you some information about our companies, Wells and LBVA. Wells is one of the largest building solutions providers specializing in prefabricated construction. Our geographic reach with the recent acquisition of gate precast covers over 30 states. We have 14 manufacturing facilities across the U.S. and have over 2,000 employees and have been in business for over 70 years. We offer design assist services along with the ability to produce many different precast products to be able to provide the most efficient precast components for the building needs. Wells also has a sealants division for caulking, patching, waterproofing, fireproofing, and restoration needs. Our website's down on the bottom there, wellsconcrete.com. And now Tyler will share some information about LBVA. Thanks, Auggie. Yeah, LBVA is a 32-person firm based in Chicago. Most of our work is with developers and community groups who work in and carry very deeply about supporting and empowering under-resourced communities. And we like to say that good design is for everyone, and we know that good design can't solve all the problems that the communities you work in face, but we believe that these communities are entitled to an equitable, resilient, sustainable, and beautiful built environment that respects and celebrates the dignity of the people who live there. Next slide. Our work covers a wide range of project types, including planning, cultural and institutional work, historic preservation, and adaptive reuse, but the vast majority of our work is affordable housing. And it's affordable housing of all types. We design shelters, SROs, permanent supportive housing, family and senior housing. And one thing that I think is important to know about affordable housing, at least in the U.S., is that it's expensive. It's developed in a very complex regulatory environment, and the codes and funder requirements that enhance sustainability and accessibility rules and labor regulations all contribute to make it challenging to finance and expensive to build. So as a result, our projects are very cost sensitive, which isn't unusual for real estate development projects. But in addition to that cost sensitivity, most of our clients own and maintain this housing long-term. In fact, we've recently renovated several affordable housing projects the firm originally designed more than 30 years ago for the same clients who still own and operate them. So that price sensitivity is balanced by concerns about long-term performance and durability. And next slide. I think as a result of all that, precast has become an important part of our work. Starting about 20 years ago with some low-rise hybrid systems using wood truss floors and precast panel walls for exterior and bearing walls. And then about 10 years ago, we started designing a number of total precast buildings where the entire structural frame, floors, and exterior walls are precast construction. And altogether, we've completed or have under construction 25 total precast buildings in low, mid, and high-rise projects containing a total of 776 apartments. And we have more in the planning stages, so we expect that number to grow. And next, Augie and Matt will kind of explain some of the process working together between precaster and architect, and then I'll come back and discuss some of the main principles we see working with precast, and then we'll talk about some case study projects. Hi, everybody. This is Matt McGrain, and I'm a senior project architect at LPPA. So, the first thing that we want to highlight is the process that we've gone through with our precast partners on some of these recent projects. And we'll briefly touch on the steps of unnecessary back and forth that occurs between the architectural design and precast team. Matt, Augie, and I will tag team the next few slides talking through our respective roles. So, just for reference, orange will be responsibilities of the architect team, and yellow will be the responsibilities of the precast partner. So, for us as architects, the first step in the process is to determine if precast is appropriate, and usually that's based on our intended occupancy or construction type. Most of the time, we investigate precast on projects where the scale lends itself to the benefits of precast construction, and namely, that's fire resistance, replicable parts and pieces, and a combination of structure and finish. We mask the project based on our program and the site constraints, and then ideally, we reach out to our precast partner very early on in development to start to make things real. So, after we've gotten kind of a baseline, then hopefully we're engaging a precast partner very early. So, Augie, take it away. Okay. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. So, you know, we get involved very early with LBBA team after building a relationship and experience on many projects. And so, we'll see some preliminary drawings, they'll review the design concepts and some of the requirements necessary for the project. Sometimes it's a structural need, sometimes it's an architectural feature. We discuss what can and can't work. I will say over the years with LBBA, they've become very precast savvy, and they've really learned a lot about what design constraints can and can't be worked out in precast. So, every project has become a little bit smoother because they've already sort of thought through a lot of the previous projects and what they've learned from them. But yeah, we do definitely identify design constraints, follow load paths, different bearing conditions. Sometimes we have to add a column and beam where necessary, and we kind of work through it back and forth. And while we always look for the potential architectural and structural needs, we always have to keep the cost in mind. We try to put together the construction costs pretty early, and our goal is to work closely with the developer and general contractor, depending on the status of the project. And our goal is to really provide a comprehensive budget using our experience, because there's not a lot of drawings and information at the time. We manage through that throughout the entire design process, and we go back and forth with different concepts, and if we go this route, what is that going to cost? And sometimes the decision is not to do that because it's more expensive. Other times, it is to use that, and so that there's no surprises at the end of the long design assist process. Okay, so next, Matt will discuss the panelization of the precast panels. All right, so once we are armed with the information about system constraints from our team, as architects, we start to use those constraints as design opportunities to inform how we set up the modules to efficiently panelize a building. So for housing, oftentimes we coordinate how floor and wall panel sizes correspond to our unit plans, plumbing stacks and demising walls, and figure out how non-repetitive elements like stairs, elevators, and shafts can fit into an overall plan and elevation of a panelized system. Back to you, Huggy. Huggy, you may be muted. Okay, thank you. A little technical difficulty, sorry about that. And then we roll into getting into engineering, talking about the different panelization, building geometry, floor-to-floor elevations, and the design loading criteria. Once that's sort of established, we determine panel thicknesses, bearing conditions, along with coordinating any major openings and building offsets. The precast specialty engineer is the engineer of record for the precast structure. Therefore, we're responsible for providing the gravity and lateral loads for the foundation to the engineer of record, who then will incorporate those loads and finalize the foundation design. Also, precast permit drawings and calculations are required to be submitted as part of the building permit submittal. Therefore, it's important that the precast design assist budget is included as part of the preconstruction budget for the developer, which wasn't at the beginning 10 years ago, but now has been incorporated. So, that allows the developer and LBBA to engage early in the process, which is important for any of these total precast projects where the precast design experience and expertise is necessary. We've worked alongside with LBBA and other consultants and follow the project milestones and submit the necessary drawings and calculations for building permit. And as always in any of these projects, the early, early design assist collaboration is always the key to success. Matt will now discuss the articulation of the exterior. Yeah, so this is where things get fun for us as the architects. Precast has a lot of flexibility when it comes to articulation. And that articulation could include the concrete mix itself, form liners and brick, variations in thickness and depth, patterns for windows and door openings, and different types of panel reveals. And so, this is where that kit of parts, all of those nuts and bolts that Aki was just talking about, start to take on the personality of the unique building. Okay. And then we start getting close to the construction. And in order to do that, we have to coordinate all the MEP openings for any floor and wall penetrations. We use bin coordination to identify any MEP, any conflicts with the MEP trades. For openings that go through the floors, usually openings three inches and smaller can be cored through the floor planks. However, larger openings through the floor planks must be designed for those openings plus the floor loading. Wall pan openings tend to be less critical. There's more flexibility there. However, all the openings need to be verified by the Precast engineer. Also, beyond the permit drawings, wells will then complete what we consider like the last 20% of the Precast shop drawings, which incorporate all the MEP openings and prepare shop tickets for panel fabrication. And once we're fabricated and we have all the erection drawings complete, we are looking at erection and logistics. Now, construction logistics planning actually occurs very early in the project. And some of the case studies will show how we were able to build the structures in several phases, depending on the site constraints. For most projects in the city of Chicago, the overall site is usually pretty tight and limited. Therefore, we have to generally try to build the building with the crane within the building footprint for as long as possible and only work our way out of the building to finish the building. And when you do that, that has to be pre-planned because where you break the building, the walls and floor plank, all the joints have to be designed at that specific phase, the location, in order to build the building in sections as required. And you'll see some examples of that. The other, obviously, the beauty of precast is, you know, we've built several of these projects through the winter, and since the Precast panels are all fabricated in a climate-controlled facility, the erection in the field is fast, efficient, and safe. And while most job sites are shut down during winter conditions, Precast erection can continue through most winter conditions. And then Matt will discuss the finishing. Yeah, so then for us as architects, the last step in the process are the finishing touches. And this includes the final approval of paints, stains, caulks, and the coordination of architectural treatments for exposed joints or connections. So sometimes we elect to cover those things up, and in other cases, we choose to celebrate them as design features. And then finishing also includes how the Precast interacts with other materials and building systems like windows, door fronts, canopies, and railings. So that's kind of where, again, all the parts and pieces come together in one unified vision. All right, so now that you've seen a little bit about the process of these projects, we wanted to talk about how some of the constraints that are inherent to Precast as a building material and system can be turned into design opportunities that make these affordable housing projects unique. Tyler, go ahead and take it away. Okay, I'm gonna discuss sort of the six main considerations and the kind of constraints and opportunities that we see as architects in designing total Precast affordable housing projects. Specifically construction, or I'm sorry, structural considerations, issues with panel weight and thickness, panelization and layout concepts, issues around constructability, coordination of trades, and finally, panel articulation and treatment. And I think what I want to emphasize here is that some of the things that might be considered limitations or constraints of working with Precast also present interesting design opportunities with real advantages for affordable housing projects. The first issue, next slide, please. So the first issue is just structural considerations. Precast on these projects is really a structural animal. And the most common systems, Precast systems we use are solid wet cast wall panels, pre-stressed hollow core planks. We've also used some insulated sandwich panels, wet cast floor slabs, Precast columns and beams and double T systems. And the structural design of Precast is really precise and efficient, but it's also quite heavy compared to other construction systems that are employed on similar projects to these. So we're really interested, you know, so things like bearing conditions and connections and clear load paths to the foundation are really important, which, you know, that's of course. And, you know, I think people might think that to do a total Precast construct, yeah, total Precast projects, you might need really simple rectangular buildings without any irregular geometries, offsets or cantilevers, kind of like the project we designed on the right. Next slide. But that's often not possible working with the complicated programs and on tight urban sites that are common for our projects. And what we've found is that there's actually a lot more flexibility in Precast than we initially expected, if you approach it in a way that works with the structural logic of the system and takes advantage of the efficiencies of Precast. And by working with the Precast engineering team early in the design process to understand the limitations and efficiencies of the different systems, we've been able to get a lot of program and design flexibility with Precast systems, including, you know, unusual geometries to get projects to fit on tight urban sites, cantilevers and setbacks that help us design buildings that are responsive to their program and the site. The next issue, like I said, Precast is heavy and that presents particular challenges for design and construction, but it also has, it's also one of the real advantages of Precast. Durability is an obvious consideration with concrete, but also fire resistance, which is a primary life safety concern. And it's especially true here in Chicago where the required fire ratings tend to be higher than in other codes and the thresholds for requiring non-combustible construction kick in a lot earlier, a lot sooner than they do in other codes. So that fire, the inherent fire resistance of concrete is a real advantage here. And it helps us with separation of occupancies, which is important in the mixed use projects that we design. And then finally acoustics, you know, Chicago is a really loud city. It's a lot of traffic. We have a very loud train system and a lot of our work is immediately adjacent to the L. So the mass of the concrete works well in those environments. And acoustics is an issue inside the building too, like with all multifamily residential projects, but especially in our projects where we have a lot of larger family units so there are more kids and more people. And the Precast concrete helps control sound transfer between apartments really well. Next is penalization and layout. I think something that I always thought about Precast before we started working in it is that you needed extremely repetitive wall and floor panels for it to be efficient. And there is efficiency to repetitive shapes and forms, but in our experience, it's more about a construction logic that makes sense. And it's also important that the design can accommodate the largest possible panel and plank sizes. And those sizes are really limited by, you know, factory limitations and bed sizes and practical and regulatory limits on shipping and crane operations. But having the largest possible pieces really helps with efficiency. And having plank spans that are relatively consistent, so that you're maximizing the efficiency of the floor planks is also important. But, you know, working toward those two constraints, there's actually a lot more flexibility in the design. The next slide. And then there are, you know, I think important design decisions to make about the penalization of the project and whether to play up the penalization, you know, to really express that as part of the architecture or whether to downplay it. And, you know, the wall panels can be arranged in horizontal configurations or vertical configurations or like a hybrid configuration like the one on the top left. And, you know, that presents a lot of decisions around how to approach the penalization, presents some interesting design opportunities if you want to express it. It can also be, you know, through use of form liners and reveals and other things to kind of downplay the size of the panels in a way that works well for different-scale projects. And we've approached it in different ways, and we think there's a lot of design potential in the penalization of the project. The fourth concept is constructability of the system. Because of the size of the panels, the sort of units of construction with precast are not like handheld bricks or slurries of concrete that can be, you know, poured into any shape and size, but they're, you know, they're ideally, you know, large panels, sometimes 14 feet by 40 feet long, that need to be fabricated on a bed in the building. In the factory, loaded onto trucks, shipped, and then, you know, placed in service by crane. So that can be challenging. You know, the logistics, the site logistics, the sites need to be really conducive to that type of construction, or a lot of consideration has to be given to it. And a lot of consideration needs to be given to things like staging and storage and crane operations. But on the flip side of that is speed, both because the structure goes up faster and includes the exterior walls. Once the precast contractor leaves the site, you're much closer to having an enclosed building than with conventional systems. So the subcontractors can get in and start their rough-in sooner, and the building can get enclosed sooner. And all of that speeds up the construction process. And on some projects, the construction duration has been shortened by up to two months, and that means, you know, lower general condition, contractors' general condition costs, and ultimately means you're delivering apartments to be occupied sooner. The next thing I want to talk about is just the coordination of design disciplines and contractor trades. I think it's a really important part of working in total precast, is the coordination between our team and the precast team. And all of these projects, all of these total precast projects that we've done have had the precast contractor on board early on in the design process. And that can be a little tricky, you know, getting funders to approve that part of the scope outside of the rest of the bidding sequence, but it's really critical for a few reasons. You know, we're working directly with the precast engineering team and coordinating with them to develop the design and the details in a way that works with the precast system and vice versa. And it's also important because the precast engineering can be included as part of the permits, the middle package, so that saves design costs and time. But there's a lot of coordination that needs to happen between us and our MEP engineers and the precast engineers to coordinate large openings and major vertical and horizontal distribution routes. And then on the construction side, there needs to be a really robust coordination process between the GC and the subcontractor trades to work out on paper beforehand exact, you know, exact routings and exactly where all the penetrations will go in the precast panels. Because, you know, because the precast system is so efficient, there are a lot of places in the panels where you just can't put penetration. So that has to be really coordinated well. And all of that's a really time-consuming process for us and our engineers and especially the GC and trades. But the advantage of that is it avoids a lot of kind of the kind of time-consuming conflicts and delays that happen on other construction projects during the construction phase. And the last concept is panel treatment and just how you articulate and finish the panels. And I've already mentioned before in the panelization that, you know, how you, you know, how you panelize a project can, you know, can influence the design a lot. But there are a lot of options for the surface finish as well. You know, probably the most typical and cost-effective one on these projects is like the photo on the right, where the precast is delivered as smooth, you know, gray concrete panels to the site and then erected and then painted in the field with high-performance greasable coatings. And other options that have higher cost are like the integral color in the photo on the lower left that uses different sands and aggregates and the concrete mix to provide color throughout the material. And then the panels can be etched or sandblasted to achieve different effects on the surface. And of course, thin brick can be cast into the panels that are shown on the upper left, which is, you know, which is expensive, so it can be challenging to make work on some of our projects, but it is appropriate in some contexts. Next slide. And then there are the different ways just to, you know, articulate the shape of the panel. We use a lot of form liners, and I think there's a lot of flexibility with form liners as long as they're not too deep. You know, for us, stuff that goes about three-quarters of an inch deep doesn't affect the design at all. But if you get form liners that are deeper than that, then it usually means that the panel needs to get thicker, and that adds to the weight and cost. But you can get some deeper reveals, like on the project on the upper left, where you're able to get, like, three-inch recesses in the panels by just avoiding some of the more structurally critical areas of the panel. And then you can also, you know, like in the lower left image, you can kind of play with the plastic quality of concrete and kind of create interesting shapes. And in this case, you know, created an undulating facade, but we worked closely with the engineering team to do that in a way that didn't add too much weight and cost and still worked with, you know, the structural system that the wall was part of. So I think like all these constraints, you know, and opportunities we've talked about, I think the important thing, at least in our experience, is that it's important to develop the design in a way that takes advantage of the precast system and isn't working against the inherent logic of a precast. So we're going to talk about three case studies. One is LM551, which was completed in 2021 with Holston Development Company. Wells and Duquesne were the precasters. And then Stevens Commons, which was completed earlier this year for Brentshore Development with WBN Wells. And then finally, West Haven Park 2D, which is currently under construction for Brentshore Michaels Company and also working with Wells. Next slide. So LM551 is the fifth phase of what will be a seven-phase project covering eight city blocks on the site of the former Cabrini-Green public housing project. And it's the second total precast project we've completed on this site. It includes 102 units and two three-story walk-up buildings and a seven-story mid-rise. Next slide. I think in the interest of time, I'll just maybe not dwell on this one too much, but I think this project, the important thing about this project is that it was kind of an obvious candidate for precast. Checked a lot of the boxes for us. Let me go to the next slide. So probably one of the more interesting aspects of this project is that there were two different precasters using two different wall and floor panel technologies. The precaster for the low-rise used a wet-cast sandwich panel for both the floors and walls, and the mid-rise contractor used solid wet-cast walls and priestess holocore floor planks. And the decision to use two different precasters was really a cost-driven decision, and I think that points to the fact that there's some nuance between precasters and that different building types and designs may work well for some precasters based on the specific efficiencies of their system. And it also points to us, points out for us as the architect, is the importance of engaging the precast contractors early on. And on this project, because there were two different systems, there were two different sets of layout constraints and considerations about panelization and layout and different considerations about the openings and penetrations that needed to be coordinated. So it required a lot of coordination between us and the precast engineering teams and then between the trades and the fabricators, but that coordination helped the project go smoothly in construction. Next slide. I mentioned this project was really well-suited for precast. The geometry is really straightforward. There are some bends and tweaks, but it's more or less a rectangle, and there's a double-loaded corridor, which is an interior bearing wall that allowed for consistent plank spans. And the program didn't stack exactly. There are some engaged townhomes and resident amenity space and parking at the base of the building, but the layout made it pretty easy to get those structural elements to come down through the building to the foundation, so there weren't major structural complications. And the organization of the site around that interior parking area made site logistics straightforward. There's plenty of space for staging and no obstructions for crane operations. So the foundations for all three buildings were installed, and then the mid-rise was erected vertically one floor at a time with subcontractors starting before the precast was even fully erected on that building. And then the low-rise precaster following on site using the same crane and erecting those buildings horizontally, working from south to north. Next slide. The panelization, I think, was interesting to point out because of how the two parts of the project and the two precasters handled the panelization differently. On the mid-rise, we expressed the panels and oriented them vertically to accentuate the verticality of the building and then used offsets in the stacking of the panels to introduce some movement going up the facade. Then on the low rise, we wanted to break down the scale of the precast panels. One, by offsetting the panels and breaking the facade into bays, and then two, by using a system of reveals and form liners to hide the panel joints and to break down the scale of the facade in a way that we felt was more appropriate for the small building. Next slide. Then I should mention that the mid-rise was always planned to be total precast and that was based on hours in the youngest experience in the previous phase. But the low rise were originally planned to be like H-Metal framing with wood truss floors, which is very common construction for buildings like this in Chicago. But when the project ran into budget problems during the design phase, the team decided to get alternate pricing for precast on those buildings as well, and the decision to go to total precast shortened the construction duration by about two months and resulted by a three-and-a-half percent cost-saving for those buildings while providing the design flexibility we needed to meet the project goals. Next project is Stephen Commons. This is a 73-unit, six-story, affordable housing project in Chicago's uptown neighborhood, which is a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, and this project was completed earlier this year. There's also a 44-space parking garage, which is relatively parking heavy for some of these projects. A lot of our work in Chicago is transit-oriented development, and this is a transit search site, but the neighboring towers who were a partner in the development wanted to provide more parking than zoning required, so there could be some overflow parking for that building as well. Next slide. I said this was a senior building and one of the goals was to provide amenities and spaces to encourage physical activity and social interaction, promote physical and social well-being of the residents. There are a lot of indoor and outdoor amenities, including fitness rooms and community rooms, and gathering spaces, terrace, garden, and walking paths. Next slide. Again, in the interest of time, I won't dwell on this, but the takeaway about this project, unlike Elm, it's a much more challenging site, but precast still help us meet the design goals and the program requirements. Next slide. Constructability. This is a very constrained site. It doesn't have an alley, and most of the sites we're working on in Chicago have the street and alley access, so there's access from the front and the back. But the alleys were vacated a long time ago and the towers were built next door, so we only had access from the street. That street happens to be a major thoroughfare connecting densely populated neighborhoods to Lincoln Park and Lakeshore Drive, so the construction logistics was a lot more challenging on this site. The building had to be built in a way that would minimize disruptions and minimize lane closures on that main street. While also making sure that the crane didn't get stuck on the site and needed a way off the site. They started in the top right corner at the street, and then worked their way around in a clockwise way, moving the crane out of the way and building the next phase and four segments, and eventually getting out to the street so that the disruptions to traffic and the lane closures were minimized. Next slide. Then structurally, this one is interesting to talk about because the upper five floors are pretty straightforward structurally. It's a double-loaded corridor, and their interior bearing walls lays out a lot like the Elm 551 project in that 90-degree corner, and the prow-like shape on the street complicate things a little bit. But for the most part, it lays out in a way that it's really accommodating to precast. But the program at the base of the building, especially the parking garage, didn't follow that geometry at all. In fact, the main corridor bearing wall ended directly over the parking drive aisle, so we needed to have this system of transfer beams and columns to support the building above. Next slide. That parking garage created some other complications. I can mention the outdoor space, that terrace, and roof deck is a really important part of the project. If this was a parking light or lighter parking project, that roof deck might have been a grade. But because the parking fills up so much of the site, we had to elevate that above the parking. That was done with a system of concrete double T's to support the roof deck on the second level of the building. Next slide. I think the last thing to mention about this project, because it really had a major impact, is that the design ramped up in the summer of 2020, and in the middle of the pandemic, so it experienced all of the material shortages and cost escalations at that time, and ran into a lot of delays, but finally got under construction in mid-2022. The cost concerns were even more acute than on our typical projects. We looked at other alternates to the precast system, including cold form metal framing on a PT concrete podium. Even in the challenging cost environment, and including with the complications of the site and the program, precast was by far the most cost-effective solution. By maximizing the efficiency of the panels and mixing different precast components, we were able to design around the complex program and meet the owner's and resident's needs on a difficult site, that delivered high-quality affordable housing, the part of the city that really needs it. This is our last case study. This is West Haven Park 2D. This project is currently under construction on Chicago's West Side. It's about a block and a half away from the United Center, if you're familiar with Chicago at all. This is the final phase of redevelopment of what was previously the Henry Horner Homes, which was one of the city's largest public housing sites. This is an ETOD project, which stands for Equitable Transit Oriented Development, which basically means increased density and minimized parking in relation to transit. If you see the image on the upper left, there's a new train station that's immediately across the street from this project on Chicago's CTA Green Line. Because of the added density, this project was able to fulfill the last of the developer's requirement to provide replacement housing for all of the units lost when the Henry Horner Homes were demolished. The project features retail on the first floor and amenity spaces, community spaces on the second floor, and 96 units of affordable housing. For this project, precast was selected for a handful of reasons. Between the client design team and project stakeholders, durability was the main concern. As the buildings that it was replacing were infamously under-maintained by the CHA. The owner appreciated the speed and cost benefits of precast overall, while us as the design team appreciated the design opportunities available for what was a fairly straightforward building in plan. Here's a quick look at our design process. Starting with our program, and then we started playing around with massing to address our site constraints. Again, the train line is on the north side of our project, less than 20 feet away from our building facade. After we played around with the massing to address the train and the adjacent neighborhood, we also use the design opportunities afforded by precast that Tyler discussed to penalize the building and articulate it in an interesting way that was responsive to its site. So for the big picture design considerations, each of those six principles played a part, and I'll highlight just a few that were most important. Since this is a high-rise, we want to take advantage of a staggered three-story vertical paneling to accentuate that vertical nature of the tower. We also utilize some different concrete mixes and a vertical form liner, which changes the appearance of the building as the sun travels from west to east animating the facade throughout the day. So the panels that you're seeing on the photo on the right are the same panels in the upper left. It's just how the sun creates the shadow throughout the day, which is pretty interesting. That's a low-cost way to articulate the building that's not adding additional cladding or other building systems on top of the structural system. So then, the thickness of precast in our particular circumstance was really important. Because as a project, it's immediately adjacent to a very active and loud train line, the thickness of the material played to our advantage. In aiding with vibration and noise control, and even the units that are right next to the train are still very quiet because of the combination of precast interior spray foam insulation and SDC rated windows and doors. So then, lastly, the construction phasing for this project was unique because of the proximity to that train line to the north. The CTA has very specific requirements for construction in the transit zone, which included having CTA provided flaggers that communicated with each train conductor on a limited daily schedule. So that meant that construction activities had to fit within that window. So it was important for us to get out of that transit zone as quickly as possible to avoid delays. So for this project, that meant facing the project horizontally and building the entire northern most 12 stories closest to the train first, and then continuing to build from north to south instead of bottom to top. So this allowed the construction to get out of that critical CTA zone in a few weeks and then mobilize other trades on the interior, on this northern third of the building while precast continued to the south. And phasing this way saved the project a bunch of weeks of slowdowns and delays that they otherwise would have had to navigate because of interaction with the CTA. And just for reference, the photo on the lower left, you can see this is standing inside of that building kind of cut in half. And you can see where the Unitement Center is. I'd never been in a building under construction that was completely open to the side, but I thought that was pretty cool. So this project is currently under construction to be complete early in 2025. And here are just a few reference of how it will look when all is said and done. All right, so in conclusion, LBBA, in partnership with Wells and other precasters, have found a lot of success implementing total precast strategies on recent multifamily affordable housing projects here in Chicago. And as we've shown above, as designers, we're able to take what others might consider constraints of using a precast system and use them to our advantage as design opportunities that make our affordable housing projects unique and successful. And with that, we appreciate your time. And thank you for bearing with us. Augie, any last words? Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you, Tyler and Matt, for a wonderful presentation. It's been really fun working on these total precast design assist projects with the LBBA team. There's a lot of complexities, but it's also very rewarding. I got to attend the grand opening of the Lucy Gonzalez Parsons Apartments in Logan Park. And to see the excitement of the local residents and then a brand new, I think it was 100-unit affordable building was great to see. I think Nicole will open up for questions. I think we have a little bit of time. Yes, we're going to open it up to questions. We do have a few questions that came in. We have a time for, I don't know, two or three questions. The first one, could you please discuss insulation and what works well? I noticed thermal breaks in areas of solid precast in the sandwich wall panels. How do you prevent moisture condensation on the interior face of concrete? I can maybe speak to that one, Matt, if you want to. But our typical wall assembly on these is a solid precast panel. On some of them, there's sandwich panels that include insulation in the thickness. But on those projects, that was really about reducing the weight of the panel and not about insulating the panel. And on all of these, there's the interior framing that supports the drywall that's held off of the wall panel. And there's closed-cell spray foam insulation that fills that cavity and provides continuous insulation on the inside of the face of the wall. And also, just acknowledging that the energy codes are getting stricter in this. And there is a thermal break where the floor connects to the wall panels in some of these buildings. And so, for the projects coming up, we're developing different details with Doug and his team that will use sandwich panels that have continuous insulation that runs the full edge to edge of the panel and provide continuous insulation requirements across the entire wall and the floor slab. Great, thank you. Next question. Have your teams have any experience with UHPC? And if so, what drawbacks have been associated with this? This is Augie. Speaking for Wells, for this type of product, we have not used UHPC. We are exploring it for other applications in much smaller, maybe more architectural cases. It's still really under development for us. So, it's one of those R&D projects for now. It's not, this is a high strength concrete, but we're talking 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 PSI concrete. Okay, great, thank you. And then, how do you deal with plumbing, specifically P-traps? I can maybe address that. I mean, with any of the drain lines that go through the slab, you know, that has to be coordinated with where the cores are in the hollow core planks and mindful of where those prestressed tendons are. But usually, the P-trap happens below the slab, and then there's a soffit or a ceiling in that area of the building. Great. And then, one last question, and then we will export the rest and send to our presenters. What about the Chicago area is making precast the basis of design where other parts of the country it is not? Are these heavily subsidized projects? All of our projects are subsidized, are heavily subsidized. And we, outside of Chicago as well. And it is interesting that it's all in Chicago, that the precast projects have all been in Chicago. And I think that's a combination of probably the market. You know, there are a number of precasters here, so I think it's a competitive precast market. And like I mentioned earlier, some of the code requirements here push you into non-combustible construction with higher fire ratings than other parts of the country. And, you know, for example, it's much harder to build like a typical podium building, you know, a wood, like a wood building on top of a concrete podium. That kind of construction isn't allowed in the Chicago code. So I think that's, those things kind of have combined to bring, you know, make precast more prevalent here. Okay, great. And it looks like that's all the time we have today for questions. So on behalf of PCI, I'd like to thank our presenters for a wonderful presentation. And all questions will be forwarded to the presenters along with contact information. And as a reminder, Certificates of Continuing Education will be available through rsep.net within 10 days of this webinar. If you have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketing at pci.org. Thank you again and have a great day and stay safe.

total precast

affordable housing

construction efficiency

fire resistance

acoustics

urban environment

design opportunities

precast strategies

Chicago housing