Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's webinar, Precast Concrete Systems and Mixed-Use Parking Applications. My name is Jim Schneider, and I'm the Executive Director of PCI Mountain States. I'll be your moderator for this session. Before we move on to our presenters, we have a few today, I'm going to take a moment and go over a few bits of housekeeping here at the beginning. First of all, this educational activity is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws, so reproduction, distribution, display, and use of the educational activity within this presentation without written permission of the presenter is prohibited. You were sent an email, all registered attendees today with handouts of today's presentation. The email will have contained a webinar attendance sign-in sheet and a guide to downloading your Certificate of Continuing Education and a PDF of today's presentation. Handouts are also available now and can be found in the handout section located near the bottom of your webinar 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 for use at locations with multiple listeners on the line. If you are the only listener on the line, there's no need to complete an attendance sheet as we already have your information. If you cannot download any of the handouts or have any other issues, please email PCIMarketing at marketing at pci.org as seen on your screen. All attendee lines are muted. The GoToWebinar toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you'll receive a private chat message. If you have a question, you can type it into the questions pane. We'll be keeping track of questions and get to those with the presenters during the Q&A or the roundtable period at the end. Also a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. PCI has met the requirements of the AIA Continuing Education System and can offer 1.5 HSWLUs for this presentation. We're a registered provider of AIA CES, and today's presentation contains content that has been approved or endorsed by AIA. Any questions about the content of this webinar should be directed to PCI. Credit earned on the 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. This 90-minute program will provide an overview of the most common precast concrete structural systems and products, cover basic design criteria and capabilities, and explore case studies that demonstrate how precast was used to solve diverse design and construction challenges for mixed-use construction. We're going to start with an introduction here at the beginning with PCI design resources and some discussion of resiliency and sustainability concepts that apply to these types of projects and all kinds of projects. Then we're going to be spending about 30 minutes going over three mixed-use case studies to kind of demonstrate this particular type of project. And then at the end, a 20-minute producer roundtable discussion where we'll be able to discuss a little bit more in depth from the producers themselves about these types of projects. So, our learning objectives today, first, we're going to explore available PCI architectural and parking garage education and design resources, we'll review the benefits of precast concrete relative to alternative methods for parking garage structures, describe precast concrete parking structure components as well as various parking applications such as standalone, mixed-use and podium structures, and we'll explain the technical, structural, and functional design aspects of precast concrete parking structures. So, PCI, for those who aren't so familiar with the organization, is the Precast Pre-Stressed Concrete Institute. We're a body of knowledge related to precast pre-stressed concrete. It's sort of a great repository of lots of information and across the industry having come from, you know, specifically from producers and our own industry handbooks, quality assurance programs, certification program, research and development programs. So, it's a, you know, a great resource to anybody out there who's designing buildings that may be using precast pre-stressed concrete, lots of different free publications and manuals and lots of resources available. So, we're talking about precast systems, we're talking about precast pre-stressed concrete offsite concrete components. So, it is a system where the components are built offsite under controlled conditions and sent to a job site for quick assembly. So, this can be architectural cladding, whether that's insulated or not, architectural load bearing panels, insulated or not. We also have, you know, kind of a term that we use of total precast systems, which is where you have precast being used for both the structural and architectural pieces of a building that can be columns and beams, double Ts, hollow core slabs, precast walls of the interior, exterior, standard and custom products, you know, so there are certain types of products in the precast kit of parts that are a little bit more standardized and others that are extremely custom, you know, or especially when it comes to architectural and things like that. Precast hybrid systems where you have architectural and structural components with structural steel cast in place and masonry. Precast also does work really well with other types of systems. And as I mentioned, PCI, Precast Pre-Stressed Concrete Institute, has a great deal of continuing education available, and these are accredited courses that people can take through our e-learning center. In-person and virtual on-demand education opportunities are available. Most of these qualify for HSW learning credits and a broad array of topics. Things like plant tours, monthly virtual webinars that we offer through PCI and through our regional group, a library of e-learning courses, an online academy, seminars and workshops. And I'll also note that all around the country, we have regional chapters of PCI that offer in-person lunch and learns and other types of learning for your firm. If you are interested, reach out to your PCI region or visit pci.org slash PCI slash education. You can see lots of the different things that are available there. And other types of resources to aid you in design and planning and constructing and maintaining precast concrete structures are available on the PCI website, pci.org. Organized by precast product category, so there's architectural, aesthetics, building enclosure design, building engineering, firestorm and blast resistance, connections, transportation, also in things like bridges and transportation design, lots of things available there as well. Guides and manuals, a vast majority of which are free to download from the PCI site. Guide specifications, also lots of different examples of projects. Search by state, products, market segment, so you can see lots of different case studies all around the country showcasing kind of some of the best practices and some of the things we can do with precast pre-stressed concrete. In terms of architectural resources, there's a great emphasis on aesthetic versatility, architectural performance and building enclosure design, architectural certification materials illustrate the breadth and depth of the precast design capabilities. Some of the different manuals and publications that we have available include the PCI color and texture selection guide, which is a great starting point to kind of just get an idea of some of the different finishes and colors and things like that that are available to designers when they're looking at their projects. It's a very aesthetically flexible material, and that manual is a good indication of that. As well as the architectural guide specifications, designers' notebooks, and the architectural precast concrete manual as well. So call a precast producer to discuss your design intent. Producers around the United States, PCI certified producers are great partners in the design process and design assist, and it's great to bring them to the table early in the process. You can kind of really refine where you're going, both aesthetically and in terms of just the economy of the forms that you're doing and what you're trying to achieve on your project. Lots of building engineering resources as well, features, some information on things like resiliency of precast firestorm and blast resistance, which we're going to talk a little bit about in some upcoming slides. High strength pre-stressed concrete structural members also deliver exceptional load carrying capacity, which can result in smaller sections, longer spans, or both when compared to other structural systems. Vibration resistant, thermal mass, fire rating, sound transmission, these are all benefits you can get from using precast pre-stressed concrete. The mass of the concrete provided in hollow course labs construction contributes to resistance floor vibrations, reduced heating and cooling demand, fire ratings up to four hours, and also great sound insulation. So it's just a very durable material that provides a lot of benefit to things like indoor environmental quality and safety. And also sustainability is a big part of the focus when we're thinking about designing buildings for today and for the future. There's lots of resources availability in the sustainability area. Also on the PCI website, precast pre-stressed concrete can contribute to sustainable design in many ways. It's a very versatile, durable material produced in a factory by highly trained personnel. It creates virtually no waste, and it's produced under stringent quality control measures. Precast panels can be quickly erected on the job site with minimal disruption. Precast insulated wall panels can save energy and reduce mechanical system requirements. Really good thermal performance from an insulated precast sandwich wall panel, which basically gives you a full envelope solution in one piece. Regionally sourced raw materials, products transported typically only 50 to 100 miles. Factories are reducing their environmental footprint as well by using solar panels, battery powered equipment, and other measures. So there's lots of initiatives the precast industry is undertaking to minimize its environmental footprints and provide the most sustainable product possible. So parking mixed use structures. Over 50 percent of the country's parking garages are precast structures. Precast is an ideal material in many ways for parking structures. Precast offers aesthetic and structural versatility, as well as accelerated construction. It's a big advantage. Because the material is built offsite in those PCI certified plants, it assembles very quickly and on time when it's shipped to the job site, so you can save months off of a project schedule using precast. Precast is resilient, providing high quality, structural longevity, and durability. So we've got, once again, on the PCI website and on the various regional websites, lots of project profiles. You can search by location, market segments, if you're interested in looking at some of the different parking structures that are out there. Lots of great case studies available. And also lots of publications and manuals in the area of parking structures. As you can see, a few examples here. Parking structures recommended practice for design and construction. Also notable, the maintenance manual for precast parking structures, because part of the real positive impact from precast parking is its longevity, and you get the best longevity out of it with the proper kind of regular maintenance that's outlined in some of these publications. So these are all pretty important resources that are available to you in those types of spaces. So quality and control and quality assurance resources. PCI certification is a well-established program. It's over 50 years old. Been around for a long time, recognized in AIA, MasterSpec, and all other types of programs around the country. And we have manuals that take you through some of what's available in the PCI certification program. M&L 116 is quality control for plants and production of structural precast concrete products. You see some of the other manuals here, as well as the erector's manual. We also have certified, qualified erectors that take the process through all the way to the end to make sure that not only is the material up to the standards of PCI certification, but also the actual installation is up to our standards as well. And we've taken it even a step further in the area of the architectural certification program with a recent upgrade to that that we launched in October of 2021. The goal here is to align, basically improve our alignment between designer expectations and PCI certified plant capabilities as designer creativity and advanced production techniques are expanding. We see certainly a lot more intricate and complex design coming out of things like BIM and architects are looking for that level of assurance that they can meet the consistency, the complexity needed on a particular project they're designing. So after discussing with a lot of designers around the country and spending a good deal of time engaging with architects and researching this, PCI developed its new categories for architectural certification, which as I mentioned, were launched in October of last year. Now instead of just one sort of blanket architectural certification, we have these different levels that essentially represent different levels of complexity and the tolerances and things like that in the material itself. So AA is a really high heightened tolerance and shape complexity. So if you're looking for, you know, you're doing some really high end corporate headquarters or something like that, that's got a really intricate design, you're going to want an AA certified plant to help you get the complexity and tolerance you need for that. AAB is also a greater emphasis on shapes and alignment tolerances. AC is very similar to the original A1 category, which is what our architectural certification was called for a long time. So that's kind of similar to what the old architectural certification was. AD is structural product and industrial wall panels. And AT is for small products like coping, trim, and accent pieces. It's important to note this new certification program as you're moving forward and looking at projects, so you can think a little bit about which level it is you're seeking for a particular project you're working on. We have guide specifications that are available at pci.org slash arccert, has a lot more information on these different levels. And you can seek out a producer in your area that's certified to the level that you need for a particular project that you're working on. So in summary, precast is a high performance material that integrates easily with other systems and inherently provides the versatility, efficiency, and resiliency needed to meet the multi hazard requirements and long term demands of high performance structures. So it's very durable, just in the fact that this is a high strength material that's produced under those controlled conditions with prestressing strand, allowing you to have that additional strength. It's a very durable, flexible material that can deliver a hundred year service life. Because a precast building can function at a high level for decades while providing flexibility of use, its environmental impact is spread out over a long period of time. Deconstruction and construction are energy and material intensive processes, so the longer a building lasts, the more its initial impact is mitigated. And the picture here is of the Baha'i Temple, which is an early example of architectural precast in the United States. This is just outside of Chicago. Beautiful ornate structure that was completed in 1952 and still beautiful to this day. And it's just an example of the kind of longevity and strength of precast. Precast is also resilient. And kind of what I look at as the difference between durability and resilience. Durability is the ability of a building or material or community to take a punch. Like, can it survive a storm, a fire, something of that nature? Resilience is taking it a step further and saying, can that building or community then continue to function and do its job afterwards? So resiliency is the ability of structures and communities to effectively adapt to changing conditions and maintain functionality in the face of stress, environmental change, or extreme events. Resilient communities are those with structures, systems, and infrastructure that are sufficiently durable and flexible to continue operation during or immediately following an extreme event or change. So precast can resist fire, wind storms, floods, storm surge, earthquakes, and blasts. There are many advantages of precast. As I mentioned, it's just a very strong, durable material, and it can stand up to a lot of these things and reduce recovery time following an event, reduce the loss of life, which is ultimately the main responsibility of a building of any kind is first to protect the lives of the people inside of it. So it protects the lives of the people. Their livelihoods also reduce the loss of property, lower annual insurance premiums, and reduced annual maintenance costs. So there are advantages to designing for resilience at the beginning. So first of all, a resilient building delivers a long and effective service life, provides safety and well-being to its occupants, which, of course, again, number one priority, effectively resist hurricane and tornado force winds, earthquakes, fires, or blast incidents, minimize disruption and reduce recovery time for individuals and communities, provide sufficient functional resilience to ensure nearly continuous operation, even in the face of environmental change and severe events, and not place excess demand on community resources. It also provides benefits for insurance and overall long-term investment. We've seen data coming out of the insurance industry with payouts going up year over year for things like fire and storms. And so certainly there is consideration to the fact for resilient above code construction, seeing benefits for insurance as well. And it's also meeting the needs of communities seeking structures and buildings that perform above code and add to their overall resiliency equation. So really what we want to think about is building for tomorrow. We want to think beyond today and think to the future as well, because it's not just first cost or first considerations. When we're making decisions, we have to think about what the impact is over the life of the building and over the long term. Climate change is here. The world is changing. The IPCC report that was released in 2021 indicates that we really need to accelerate our efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change while also preparing for inevitable change that's already here and it's already in action. The simple fact is that buildings will experience more stress in the coming decades. So as a result of that, it's more important than ever to build with both sustainability and resilience in mind. We have to think about what we can do to mitigate the impacts of climate change and reduce our footprint environmentally, but also have buildings that are strong and durable and able to survive the threats and stresses that they will face in the future. So when we look at buildings as a whole, our impact on the environment is big, which is why we have to think about what we can do as an industry to bring that down. So according to the United Nations Environment Program, buildings and their construction worldwide account for about 36 percent of global energy use and 39 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions each year. U.S. Energy Administration data from 2018 shows that residential and commercial buildings account for 40 percent of energy usage in the United States. The building industry consumes 40 percent of the raw materials flow of the global economy each year. EPA estimates that 569 million tons of construction and demolition waste were generated in the United States in 2017. That's more than twice the amount of generated solid municipal waste. So we want to look at things from a lifecycle perspective, and this definition of sustainable design comes from the U.S. General Services Administration. Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts to the environment and the health and comfort of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments. So really what we want to do is think about what we can do by our material choices, by our design choices, to do the most while impacting the least, essentially. So utilizing a sustainable design philosophy encourages decisions at each phase of the process that will reduce negative impacts in the environment and promote the health of occupants without compromising the bottom line. With an integrated, holistic approach that encourages compromise and tradeoffs, such an integrated approach positively impacts all phases of a building's lifecycle, including design, construction, operation, and decommissioning. So several approaches to sustainable design, its main objectives are to reduce or completely avoid depletion of critical resources like energy, water, land, and raw materials and prevent environmental degradation caused by facilities and infrastructure throughout their lifecycle, and create built environments that are livable, comfortable, safe, and productive. Do this in a number of ways. First of all, optimize site potential, optimize energy use, protect and conserve water, optimize building space and material use, and enhance indoor environmental quality. Also optimize operational and maintenance practices. And precast has things that contribute to many of these different types of things. And certainly when we're talking about the type of mixed-use structures that we're talking about here, there really is an opportunity to optimize site potential and optimize building space and material use. And we also want to build in resiliency and adaptability, which as I mentioned in some of the previous slides, is sort of inherent to precast, which is a very strong, durable, resilient material. So there are advantages to using precast and by pursuing these types of mixed-use projects. Precast is very well suited for multi-story construction, which allows greater density, which is part of what we think about when we want to reduce transportation impacts and things like that. Because components are manufactured to plant and shipped to the site, it's ideal for construction in tight or sensitive sites. Precast construction creates minimal waste and site disturbance. Sustainable design seeks to conserve natural areas, restore damaged areas, or promote biodiversity. And one way to do that is to maximize the efficiency of a building footprint and allow for greater open space and vegetation. And some of these types of designs where we have several levels of parking below and then maybe office, healthcare, something like that above it, you're basically removing the need for a hardscape parking lot and putting it into that more efficient building footprint. And precast also allows parking to be incorporated into the building footprint, limiting site disturbance, and it can be used also for vegetated roofs. So today, we're going to be talking about a few examples of case studies that kind of indicate this type of construction. And so we're going to be hearing from some of the folks who are involved in these projects. The first of these case studies is 500 Pearl Street in Buffalo, New York. The speaker is Eric Rowitz. He's a sales representative with High Concrete Group in Denver, Pennsylvania. The project scope in this case was apartments, hotel rooms, banquet and meeting space, office space, retail and restaurant space, and a five-floor parking garage. Our second case study today is One Bellevue Station in Denver, Colorado. The speaker for this one is Dan Parker, Lead AP, Vice President of Sales, The Mountain States for Wells Concrete in Brighton, Colorado. Project scope on this one is four levels of parking and a 10-story office tower. And finally, we're going to be taking a look at 1323 Morse Avenue in Chicago. The speakers for this one are Augie Chung, Vice President of Sales for Great Lakes Wells Concrete in Crystal Lake, Illinois, and also Jim Miller, Senior Project Manager, International Concrete Products in Germantown, Wisconsin. The scope of this project is an eight-story building, five levels, luxury residential, three levels of parking. And on that, I'm going to turn the presentation over to Eric Rowitz, who's going to be talking about 500 Pearl Street. Hi, and welcome to the Mixed-Use Parking Series applications. My name is Eric Rowitz, and I'm going to highlight the 500 Pearl Street project in Buffalo, New York. This is a case study performed by the High Concrete Group. Extend a thank you to PCI for allowing us to present today, and also the developers and designers of this project. A quick introduction, my name is Eric Rowitz. I am a sales representative of High Concrete Group. I have 12 years of engineering experience with this company and have recently transitioned into sales. I have a Master's of Engineering Management and a Bachelor's of Structural Design and Civil Engineering from the Penn State University. As mentioned, the project that we want to highlight in Mixed-Use is 500 Pearl Street. It serves as a podium parking structure, and we'll get into that a little bit later as to what that entails. But first, the agenda and some topics that we're going to review today. So, we're going to do an overview of the project. We're going to talk about some of the challenges and more about and more about the solutions, how we constructed the building, some features of the design, some of the maintenance, and some of the aesthetics. And finally, we'll talk about the results that this project has given this customer. So, at a high level, the project was a podium and the owner is Ellicott Development. The architect is Kidney Architects. Engineer record was Trado Engineering, and the general contractor was LeChase Construction. The total project cost is around $75 million, and the total square footage is 382. That's floor plate area. The precast portion of this was approximately $8 million, and the precast percentage, or the square footage of precast, was 138,000 square feet. This amounted to 680 unique pieces of precast and provided about six floors of above ground parking and other spaces, and has 380 parking stalls included. So, what is a podium? A podium is essentially an interface floor and multiple floors that serve as the foundation for the superstructure above. And in this case, as you can see on the screen, the image on the left, the first six floors was parking garage, and the additional floors above were steel framed to create residential and retail spaces above and below the precast garage. Some of the challenges in considering, or why you would consider converting a structure to precast podium, as opposed to the other materials, is that if you need aesthetic treatment, it's easy to apply that to a precast element, and the parking can be concealed above ground. It does provide natural ventilation, depending on the openness of the garage itself. It can fit a tight construction schedule on site, because it's all fabricated off site. It also is able to support quite a bit of load, as far as what structure is placed on top of it. And it's all constructed within the footprint of the building, and there's no other materials, materials, logistics, or cranes as such, that sit outside the footprint for a majority of the construction. So speaking of construction with more detail, the speed of construction of this project was roughly 70 days to erect, and there was very few trades on site at the time. Using precast, there's little to no shoring, as opposed to cast in place, and once the pieces are installed, they're near ready to be driven on, or supporting other elements, such as workers or vehicles. It's fast, it's simple, and there's a much faster time to the market, as opposed to some other solutions. There's virtually or no cast in place work on the elevated parking structure, and there's a lot less job site construction and congestion during the time of installation. The levels of precast provide a very safe working platform during construction, and for podium applications and usage during the next phase of the project. In this picture here, there is no steel on the top of the building, and a few later images will show what that looks like, and discuss more about the interface. And now we'll talk about some of the solutions that were offered up during the design process. Obviously, being precast, we provide premium quality in the sense that this is manufactured product that is off-site and in a quality-controlled environment. Along with that, we're able to provide higher strength concrete mix designs, as opposed to cast in place, typically 5,000 to 7,000 PSI is the upper bound for cast in place, whereas precast, we can hit up to and potentially beyond 12,000 PSI. So our cross sections and all of our supporting elements that need to carry the gravity load through the structure don't need to be as large as cast in place. The other thing to consider is the seismic detailing of this. Obviously, it's acting as the podium and the supporting elements to the steel above, in this case. The response coefficients and everything that gets associated with seismic design can be incorporated into both structures, and being precast, depending on the detailing, we can achieve an intermediate precast design phase, so that it almost emulates cast in place concrete through our connections. Precast offers a very good span to depth ratio. As you see in the picture here, our tees are spanning 60 plus feet with little to no construction depth, probably about three or three and a half feet, so that each floor feels very open and there's not a lot of intermittent columns to support the vertical elements. And lastly, and we'll get to the next slide to talk about the interface again, but lastly, the fire rating of this floor and all the other floors is about three hours fire rated, so that concrete inherently already has fire characteristics or fireproof characteristics, in the sense that it doesn't need additional sprayed on fireproofing. So, some more solutions through design. This screenshot is a picture of the model that we used to create our shop drawings, but you can see that the yellow elements that protrude up through the green double Ts, and then in areas of blue, there's little short steel columns that would transfer up to the floor above. And the floor above would be a steel beam and metal deck with poured slab surface. In this case, that was the next floor, so that would have been the interface floor and all the vertical and horizontal loads were taken down to either the bottom of the steel or through cross braces that touched the top of the purple interior precast walls. In the lower right-hand corner, some of the details from the shop drawings were either embedded anchor bolts, embedded plates, or lifters that would have been used to move panels into place and then reused for connections. And the solutions that Precast offered from a maintenance perspective were the strength and integrity of Precast concrete over time is what was needed to effectively support the steel frame for this high-rise. And from the architect and owner's perspective, the reason Precast was chosen is that because it was durable, it was straightforward during the erection process, it had the structural capacity, and the fact that it could incorporate the aesthetics in integrating with the other materials is why this building was chosen to be Precast. And here's a picture of the exterior of the building. You can see that a portion of it is Precast. Some of it was metal panel that was attached and post-installed to the Precast facade. This Precast had different types of finishes, whether it be a light sandblast or a heavy acid etch to create reprieve across the elevations. All in all, the results are what you see on the screen. It is now Buffalo's premier live-work-play high-rise hub, offering not only office and commercial, but shared spaces, common areas, and entertainment for this customer. Once again, I thank you for your time. We will ask you to hold questions until the end, and now I'll pass the presentation to Dan Parker. Well, welcome. This is Dan Parker with Wells Concrete. I've been in the industry about 32 years, located in Denver, Colorado. Our market's a little unique. We do quite a few total Precast office buildings. We have ever since I came into the industry, and maybe that's a little unique for our region, but I'd say most of our office buildings here are total Precast. Now, I'm going to be talking to you about one Bellevue Station. This is a 16-story total Precast office building with parking underneath. It's about 678,900 square feet mixed-use project with retail on ground one, or level one. The office portion is about 300,000 square feet of office space and 370,000 square feet of parking. Now, the parking has six supported levels with four of them tucking under the office building. The parking is designed for a future horizontal expansion. Some of the things here that are unique to Denver, I think, you know, our market is used to looking at different systems for office buildings in particular. So, we usually get involved really early at a schematic design phase, and we might see, you know, the engineer records putting out a package for, you know, a conceptual steel design, as well as a conceptual Precast design. That happens pretty often in our market. So, we're always looking to convert projects, and, you know, sometimes you just see the steel come out, and our first thought is, hey, we're going to go try to convert this project to Precast. So, that's what happened on this one. You know, they put a cast-in-place steel design out, and we got a hold of the drawings and said, okay, we're going to go figure out what this might look like Precast-wise. So, one portion about this I have up on the screen is the footprint of the office building and the tuck-under parking. It was basically the same framing system. We didn't switch bays or, you know, a 60-foot bay versus a 40-foot bay or 45-foot bay. So, we kept this framing all the way up the building. So, it's a 44-foot bay, a 30-foot bay, and a 44-foot bay. And then we, you know, we'll typically put together a conceptual framing plan as well as put together schedule and logistics plan when we're trying to propose on these type of buildings. So, once we went through that process, the total Precast version won out, you know, and that's basically pricing was one thing. So, we were very competitive on pricing, and then schedule was the biggest thing. This is a large, large project, and I think we beat the cast-in-place deal on schedule by at least six months. Some of the features of the building is high-contrast colored panels. We had kind of really two different colors. It looks like three, but we had a white architectural Precast with a charcoal-colored Precast that went all the way up the building. Some of the value engineering is always a big portion of the project. And so, we go through that pretty diligently. This happened so long ago, I can't remember everything that we might have went through. But, you know, that's one thing, especially when you're competing against steel and other types of structures, is you're always looking to figure out, you know, what's going to make the Precast most efficient. Some constructability challenges that we had. This was a very, very tight site for two. It was a two-crane scenario, and both the cranes had luffing jibs on them. So, that was challenging. The other part that I think I need to talk about is, I said this is a total Precast building, but because of the way it was constructed with columns and spandrels around the perimeter, we, you know, and the height of the building, it really needed to have cast-in-place cores, which I'll touch on here in a little bit. But that added to the complexity of the site logistics, because we had these cast-in-place towers that we had to erect Precast around and in between, and had two cranes, one on each side of the office building, that were competing for airspace, really. The other thing that was challenging with the project is the contractor required, instead of, you know, maybe compacting the soil for the cranes, they asked us to bring in crane mats. So, we had crane mats under both cranes, and, you know, every time you move the crane, probably lost a half a day of erection, because you had to move the crane mats and then walk the crane, and it just is a time-consuming process. So, that didn't help us. And the other challenge we had was the link between the office building and the parking garage that was outside the footprint of the office building. You know, the cranes were inside the office building footprint, and then had to back their way out, which means at the link, the contractor had to leave the foundations out for the parking garage, you know, as we crossed over that area. So, there was a pause once we got past that link. We had to wait for the contractor to go install the foundations at the link of the parking garage. So, I started to mention, you know, we want to talk about, you know, special design requirements. So, really, the biggest thing was the cast-in-place cores. And so, I touched on it before with the column and spandrel design at the perimeter. It doesn't really give you any lateral stability in that sense. So, when we're designing a total precast office building in Denver metro area, we have to consider seismic. So, you have to design for wind as well as seismic. And with the column and spandrel perimeter, that doesn't give you any lateral resistance. So, your cores have to do all of the work. So, you know, our rule of thumb here is we could probably do a total precast building with a column and spandrel perimeter. We could do precast cores up to about eight or nine levels. And then, once you get beyond that, as the building is taller, the lateral loads at the bottom of the cores really get significant. They grow in magnitude. And what that causes is instead of, you know, as a precaster, we make planar walls. So, as you put the cores together at the bottom, when the loads grow, they kind of start wanting to be act monolithic around the corners. So, that causes you to have, say, continuous welding to get that to work or maybe even go into a wet cast joint around the corners. So, when that starts happening, it really makes a precast core scenario inefficient and you start pricing yourself out of the job. So, the right answer for this job was to have a cast-in-place core that went well. There's actually three of them that went up the building. So, that creates challenges for all kinds of reasons. One, you know, it's a different product. So, you're setting on, you're not setting on precast or precast. So, there's early coordination that goes on up front for, you know, we basically would have to drafting-wise elevate all the cores and provide layouts for all the embed plates we need for bearing haunches. So, it would coordinate with our precast erection. So, that happens early on. And then, you know, cast-in-place isn't always perfect as they're building a core up the building. So, it can get out of plane, they can tilt, they can skew. So, logistically, as you're erecting precast, you always got to be able to make adjustments on the fly. And then, just the logistics of erecting around the core. So you imagine sitting there, we're sitting two cranes in the basement of this, this office building with big luffing jib, jibs on the cranes. And then you're trying to erect precast simultaneously on each side of the building and feeding them, feeding it in between these cores that are 16 stories in the air. So it's a challenge. We've done it several times, but you know, we get used to doing it, but it's something to think about if you're approaching this kind of building. So, you know, some of the neat features on this building are these sculpted ribbon spandrels. They kind of had a bow tie effect on them, which was kind of neat. It shows up very nice in the sunlight. And then, you know, we also had these, this unique form liner on the parking garage spandrels. Some of these were on the office as well. Anyway, some of the stats on the job, we had about 2,750 pieces on the project. We were pushing 16,000 cubic yards of concrete, and we had about 68,000 man hours on the job between the plant and the field. So we had this really neat, this was part of the architecture, this neat picture frame. This happened on, you know, the corner of the building as well as on the parking garage areas of the building. And then the parking garage was also designed for a horizontal expansion. So that hasn't been built yet. It showed up a couple of years ago. We looked at a project where they were gonna have another tower on this site as well as expand this parking garage. So that never ended up developing, but it's still designed for that future expansion. So with that, I'd like to hand over to our next speaker, Augie Chung, and Jim Miller for the next project. Hello, everybody. This is Augie Chung. I'm the Vice President of Sales for Wells in the Great Lakes Division. Today we're presenting a project called 1323 Morse Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. There's a picture of the completed building. The building is an eight-story total precast building, approximately 83,500 square feet. The bottom three floors are parking, and then it transitions into five levels of condo residential. On the fourth floor behind the building, there's a amenity deck, and on the roof, they utilize the roof as a roof garden for the residents. The project consists of architectural and structural precast. The architectural precast is used as a load-bearing element, which is part of the reason this building is designed efficiently. The lower three levels for parking, we utilize double Ts, pre-topped double Ts, and at the challenging transitions for the ramping, we had to use solid slab, a finished broom top. Once we moved up to the residential, that was comprised of primarily hollow core floors that were topped in the field, and walls, beams, and columns as needed for the structure. The building was erected in 45 days with about 600 precast components. For the pre-construction and design phase, one of the challenges of this project was you don't really start out with a lot of information. We had a rendering. We had a couple schematic floor plans, and the architect and engineer were trying to figure out what the best way to design this building was, and one of the avenues they explored was cast-in-place concrete with field-laid brick, and I think that was too expensive and was going to take too long to build, so they reached out to us, and we were able to utilize different precast components, and we partnered up with ICP, and Jim Miller will be speaking later in this presentation, to accommodate all their design requirements aesthetically. At the same time, that was part of our value engineering, to take that architecture, but still maintain it as a structural load-bearing element to not duplicate structure, which saves money, and the other thing was to try to maintain the budget from our initial conceptual design all the way through when we completed our full design of the project. We had very little changes in terms of cost beyond any sort of scope additions, and that's part of the value that we bring in as experts in the precast field. With our experience to build these types of buildings with very little information, we try to make sure we think through everything that is necessary at the very beginning of the project so that there isn't surprises later about missing scope and scope gaps. We were in charge of the structural design of the precast structure, so pretty much we provided the gravity and lateral loads to the engineer of record, but we're really the precaster is the engineer of record for the structure. Also, as we went through our design meetings, project schedules, production schedule, in coordination with our partner ICP, we maintained a schedule for the project. So here are some photos of precast prefabrication sections, numbers for those that aren't familiar. At the top left is a precast double T. These are used in parking decks and was incorporated in the parking deck portion of this building, and the beauty of the double Ts, it's an efficient structure, it's light, and you have a finished top that you don't have to pour a field topping. The hollow core slab to the right, top right, is for the residential floors. Again, they're thin slabs that are pre-stressed and very efficient for residential. Usually the bottom of the slabs are just painted, so they're pretty much exposed ceilings. It reduces your floor-to-floor on the building. There is a topping, a leveling topping required because there is camber on the hollow core floors. Here's a visual of some insulated and solid panels. We used architectural panels in the perimeter and solid panels for the stair and elevator shafts on the inside of the building. And there's some examples of columns and beams as needed. And one of the challenges of building like this is when you transition from different uses, from a parking and lobby area in the lower levels, and then you convert that into a residential, the structures to make that align or to utilize columns when there's offsets, but to strategically locate them and limit the amount of columns that are necessary are some of the challenging design elements that we're able to accomplish using precast, using different member sizes, depths, thicknesses, reinforcing, and try to limit the encroachment on the use of each of the levels and what the purpose is. The other benefits from using a precast structure is all the products are prefabricated in a production facility, and as a result, they are driven out to the site on a truck and we're able to limit the amount of space we need to rep the structure like this. And so if you look at this photo, you'll see that we have a big crane out there that we're utilizing for the past because the members can be fairly heavy. And we're able to build the structure in such a manner that we keep the crane within the site for as long as possible until we need to get out to finish it. There were power lines to the east. The existing building to the south was about five feet away. And when there's a picture of a cornice, which kind of projects out from the panel, which is only like a few feet away from the existing building. So it's a very tight site. The city wanted us to limit the disruption to the existing city streets and the residents that live in this area. So we're able to manage that by utilizing the precast structure, pre-fabricated members and work in such a tight site. Okay, now I'm going to hand it over to Jim Miller from International Concrete Products. Jim. Hello everyone. As Augie mentioned, I'm Jim Miller, International Concrete Products. I'm the Senior Project Manager for them. And we are happy to partner with Wells when they approach us to partner on this project. You can see here, even though these are structural load bearing panels, they have a high-end architectural finish. They have thin brick and then a buff acid etch finish. And this slide, we can see the double Ts coming into the architectural wall panels. And they come right in the center of the arch windows. And you'll be able to see in future slides on how the design team handled taking care of that issue. So as I mentioned, this was a thin brick facade with an acid etch buff finish. We went through several rounds of samples with the architect on this project to get to the brick and the finish that they were looking for. One of the good features on this is at the top, the peak. That peak is 28 feet wide at the base and 14 feet high and is made up of three separate pieces with a clover leaf design in the center there. In this picture, you can see the lures that were installed at the arch windows at the lower parking levels, which hid where the double Ts were bearing on the architectural panels. Also in the picture on the right, you can see for cost efficiency where we are right next to the building to the east, the brick and the cornices were removed, but we kept the buff acid etch finish so if that older building ever gets torn down, you still have the nice architectural buff finish on that side as well. The brick and the cornices were on the north and west elevations. The cornices on the fourth, seventh, and roof level are two feet in depth and the second floor cornice is three feet in depth. All right, at this point, we will now begin the panel discussion. All right, everybody. Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you to Eric, Dan, and Augie, and Jim for your presentations and for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking us through those projects. So now we've got a few minutes to kind of discuss a little bit more about some of the sort of considerations and advantages of using precast in these types of systems and answer a few questions that we've gotten in. So I'm just going to start kind of broadly to the group and anyone can kind of jump in on this. How would you recommend getting started on a project like a mixed-use project like this using precast? I know that we generally encourage folks to meet with their precaster earlier in the process, but I know we've also had discussion here about some projects that were looked at in a few different ways. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are. What are some of the approaches that you find most effective at the beginning? I'll jump in. This is Dan. You know, you hit it right on the head, Jim. You know, if you're interested in doing a project like this, you need to be talking to your local precasters and get them involved. You know, most precasters make similar products, but they're not always exactly the same sections. So you want to be sure you're talking to the local people and they're going to guide you. They're going to be able to guide you on the most efficient uses of precast for a particular project. Eric, Augie, or Jim, anybody want to jump in and add to this? Yeah, I'll jump in. This is Eric. I think bringing the precaster in is one thing, but I think having a team approach and really all the players in the room to figure out not just the precast, but the programming requirements. A lot of times being mixed use, you have retail, residential, office. Everybody has to be in the room to really come up with a good game plan because like it was mentioned, the columns and the walls, we want them in one spot, but somebody else might want them somewhere else. So I think really having an inclusive design process and being willing to adapt is what flexes our strength and allows us to kind of make the building or at least be a part of it. Yeah, that's a really good point. I completely agree 100%. And then one thing that would be important too, and it just builds on what Eric said, is as a design team, you really need to have the MEP guys on board because as you're designing a precast building, as we're doing shop drawings, we want to do all that MEP coordination upfront. And a lot of times those consultants get hired on later. And so it is very important to have them at the table like Eric suggested. This is Augie. The one thing I'll add to that is on the project for the 1323 Morris Avenue, we were actually engaged by the architect and engineer. They didn't even have a general contractor on board. So we were working directly with the owner developer and the architect and engineer. And as we went through the design and budgeting, because obviously cost is always an important factor, the general contractor who actually was ultimately selected for this, wasn't that familiar with doing this type of total precast. They did a lot of casting play structures with the contractor. And they were surprised at how we could even price this job at the level of drawings that we had. And it just goes to show the experience and value of bringing on precast experience because the company on early. Kind of pivoting on that value conversation. I know some of you guys touched on some of this and you're talking about your specific projects. And again, I know every project's different, every situation's different, but when we're talking about the value of precast in this type of product, do you find is, cost the big driver, schedule the big driver, is precast end up being competitive in all those areas or is there an area that you see more often being an advantage for precast? I'd say we got to be competitive all the way around. Cost, you got to be in the ballpark cost-wise. But the other thing, schedule, I haven't found any other system that's faster than precast. So schedule is always one of the big advantages. And we got to be sure that you're getting credit for the schedule from the general contractor or whoever's pulling everything together, that you're getting credit for that schedule savings. Anybody else see similar things in your neck of the woods? Yes, this is Auggie again. And cost is always a factor. And what Dan brought up is interesting because if you're unfamiliar with utilizing precast and like a total precast building like this, everybody's looking at the initial cost only and necessarily the cost of the structure and not of the schedule. And there's a significant savings when you look at it comprehensively. And so we have contractors and designers in our region and I'm sure the other guys are the same where the people that have designed precast buildings tend to always go that route because they understand all the value in terms of both design and cost and schedule. So what's it worth, just as an example, what's it worth to an owner to occupy his building six months ahead, six months earlier than using precast and using another system? Sometimes that can be worth, that value outweighs any extra costs that the upfront costs that you might have. Is that something you find you really have to like bring up and explain or a lot of owners kind of thinking about that as they go in? I don't know, I think the owners get it. And sometimes general contractors, we have to have the discussion with them to make sure that they're, cause they're the one communicating with the owner about the cost, that they're explaining that the value of like, okay, yeah, maybe the upfront costs might be a little bit more, but look what you're saving on the backend. Being able to occupy your building or generate revenue six months earlier. So can you guys comment on, or maybe explain a little bit about how a design assist contract works? Well, we do quite a bit of that in our area. I think Augie does the same, we're working on design assist agreements, we're starting to, like Augie mentioned, sometimes we're on board with the developer prior to the contractors being on board. So, we have our own language, we wanna, the developer is gonna hire the design team, they're gonna be paying for design. So we just wanna be part of that package if we're brought onto the team early and we're gonna be helping say the design team develop their drawings, get the construction documents, we're gonna have a fee for that, right? So we just wanna be part of that design fee that the developers pay and the design team. Anybody else have experience like with the design assist they wanna talk about? Yeah, we've certainly had several situations where the projects only funded for pre-construction design. And so we've been hired as a precast designer part of the design build team, and our contractors actually work directly with the architect, because the architect is the one that holds the contract reconstruction phase of the project. It's the contract reconstruction phase of the project. And then once we go through design and it goes out to bid, then the general contractor is then assigned our contract for the construction of the project. So what are some of the, and we've got a couple of questions that have come in on this front too. Some of the special design considerations regarding things like vibration and noise and fire in these types of projects. Anyone? I'll jump in. fire is, I mean, precast is inherently fire resistant, right? Eric mentioned that earlier. So, you know, in office buildings in our region, usually you gotta have a two hour fire rating and that's pretty easy to get using precast. You know, noise, I worked on one project where parking, trying to think of it, I think parking didn't necessarily tuck under the office building, but it was attached, it was right next to you. So they were worried about noise and vibration from the parking garage, translating into the office building, which really didn't happen, you know, precast is pretty dense, I mean, it's concrete. So that didn't really pan out. Vibration, you know, occasionally we'll do buildings that have lab space in them. And vibration is just something that you have to design for. So if you have the criteria, you can typically design for it. And it might require, you know, a little deeper member, so it's stiffer, but typically you're able to design for it. So is that like an engineering design issue then, more than it is the material itself, just how it's- Yeah, it's an engineering design and it's not necessarily like reinforcing, it could be, but it might be more, you know, relate to depth of the member versus what the span is. Gotcha. Anybody else have anything they want to add to that before we move on? We see fire and vibration more so than noise. I think Dan, you know, he said concrete is dense. I don't know too many occurrences where noise has been a measured amount. Fire, it's more just what the code requires. Precast sections, we can hit almost walls, floors, up to four hours plus, depending on the thickness. Vibration is more so just the depth of section or how much additional reinforcement, but it's really the section and cross section properties to limit the vibration. Yeah, and I guess I'll talk about noise because we do a lot of hollow core projects and, you know, for people that travel and stay at hotels, you'll know the difference between a precast hollow core floor slab or a concrete slab, wood frame slab, or floor, because you can hear the steps and you can, it's a lot louder and noisier in the building. Amen to that. I used to live in apartments in Chicago. I could hear everything that was going on upstairs. Yeah, that's a big plus. Question we got in here from one of our attendees is asking, is a full precast parking system able to extend multiple stories below grade? I'd say, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Now, if you're multiple stories below grade, your perimeter is probably, you know, a cast in place retaining wall. So there'd be some interface between that and the precast, but there's no reason you couldn't have a total precast structure below grade. Yes, we just finished the building a year ago. It was two levels of parking below grade, and like Dan said, they did use that earth retention system for the perimeter, foundation walls, basement walls, but everything within the structure was precast. And then once it got above grade, then the perimeter became precast as well. What are some of the considerations that you have to take into account when you're looking at the difference between the parking and occupied space? You know, I don't, when you have parking underneath, typically the only thing I can think of is that, you know, that floor above the parking, that first level of office or apartments, whatever, has got to be insulated. So we've seen, usually it might have to be a little bit taller floor to floor height there. And we've seen in our area, we've seen a lot of people that have to be insulated and we've seen in our area, put it in like a drop ceiling with insulation. So you're insulating that first level of office or residential or whatever it is. Yeah, and from, and along with that, you know, we also have, you have to know where the drive aisles are, parking underneath and where the parking stalls are. And typically these deals, if you have a total precast and it's residential above, it's the residential that drives the project from a pro forma cost standpoint. So, you know, we typically drive the structure design from above and drive the structure down. And usually you can make some adjustments on parking stalls and layouts and what have you. Where we do have structure that potentially needs to come down at, over the drive out, we had to have to utilize like a precast transfer beam. In some cases that's not ideal. And that's another reason that it's good to get the precast on board early because we could maybe make some changes around the design and layout overall as a collective team to avoid members and situations like that, which will reduce the cost of the project. Now, I think Augie hit it right on the, you know, right on the point there. The system above the precast in the podium application, if it has long corridor walls or load bearing walls that don't necessarily frame over top of what would transfer that down through the precast, there's some elaborate techniques and exercises that bringing a precaster on board, we can suggest or work with the system designer to understand how that load gets transferred down through the structure. In the 500 Pearl example, the steel started above the top of the precast columns, but in some cases there is an interface floor, whether that be a transferred precast floor or a series of transfer beams, it gets pretty complicated pretty quick depending on what load bearing elements are above the precast, something that we would want to be a part of, probably something that we could definitely tackle. It's just at what cost is it worth doing it in precast or some other trade above the precast garage? So I know we, in some of these, we talked about some using different structural systems with precasts. Is this, does that present special challenges or considerations that you guys have to deal with from the precast perspective? Well, I'd say, yeah, I mean, we, you know, my, I don't know, I've just been doing it long enough. When you start mixing systems, it always seems like it ends up being more expensive, but, you know, like on the one Bellevue Station job, that was the right answer to have cast-in-place cores. It just was for the job. And sometimes you go down that road. I just got off a phone call, an engineer at record reached out to me and he was doing a project that was kind of far away for us to go look at it, but he wanted a steel structure with precast beams and double Ts and saying that the precast beams were gonna bear on steel columns. And I just, yeah, I don't know, that sounds really messy and it wasn't attractive really for us. Yeah, and then when you, and when you mix different components, you know, we had a project where we did a precast parking deck for a Texas wrap or donut apartment building, but they had an area where it was a large retail residential podium and they decided to go with steel columns and beams, masonry CMU walls, and a hollow core. And so, you know, masonry CMU walls and a hollow core podium slab, and just the coordination and some of the issues that they had was such a challenge that in phase two, they called us and told us, we're going to go total precast on that. Precast columns, beams, hollow core, hollow walls, so. So could we, I don't know if any of you guys also have any thoughts on, you know, some of the things that we can do in the plant now, enhancements like things like, you know, doing glazing in the plant or electrically, you know, planning for electrical. Do you guys run into that a lot? Is that something that's a real value add that you find or anybody want to comment on that? We've done, you know, windows, we've installed windows in the plant of gosh, I don't know, 15, 16 jobs over the last 10 or 12 years. And the first time somebody asked us to do it, be honest, we were really nervous about it. And what turned out, it was, it went pretty easy. We had the glazer in the plant, they installed it, we shipped it and didn't have any issues. And it turns out for whatever reason, the glass and the precast are, I don't know, similar stiffnesses going down the road. It didn't cause any problems. Heck, we even, when we were building our new plant, we installed windows and we're shipping wall panels flat and we had a snowstorm and then, you know, in Denver you get snow and then it melts the next day. So we shipped, ended up shipping a panel and nobody noticed, but it had like a couple inches of water sitting on the window and it shipped just fine. And so it was a small window, I'll say that. It was a small window, but you know, don't be afraid. I think everybody's heading towards, you know, as much offsite construction as you can have and put windows and precast actually works really well. And then if you, you know, you provide and say an insulated precast panel and then you put windows in it, I mean, you're almost dried in as soon as you erect the building. Anybody else have any thoughts on that? Yeah, let me throw this one out. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, we do a lot of where we're casting and we like to go in and especially in gymnasiums where they can't have exposed, you know, boxes and conduit, we do a lot of that. So we've got a question in from one of the attendees. It's asking how precast construction compares with mass timber construction with upcoming IBC 2021 changes, relaxing height limitations, both in terms of project budget and schedule. Anybody have any thoughts on that? I don't have a lot of experience competing against that. You know, they just don't, we haven't competed. So I don't know cost-wise, you know, I've heard that a CLT system is pretty expensive and I just don't know. I've seen, I think I saw somewhere, might've been in California or Seattle, there was like Adidas headquarters and it was a precast framing, well, columns and beams with a CLT or type of floor structure. It was pretty cool looking, but haven't really competed head to head against it yet. Yeah, in Wisconsin, they built a 25 story high rise and basically the podium, the level I get 10 or so was cast in place and then built a pretty stout podium structure. I mean, the mass timber columns and beams and slabs went up above that. I did go out and take a look at it as they were erecting it. You know, it looks nice. It is, the spans are obviously a lot shorter. The cost, you know, we were told that the mass timber was fabricated and delivered from Europe. So I don't know what the cost thing is. It seems like it's pretty expensive right now, but we're starting to see a little bit more and more of that but like Dan said, we haven't really competed against it so I don't know about it. Yeah, a couple other questions we got in here. One is, are your walls for these types of projects typically solid or insulated sandwich panels? Well, around, you know, around the parking, if you had walls around the parking, they wouldn't necessarily have to be insulated, but certainly when you got up to the residential or office, they may wanna be. Now, office buildings, I'd say, are typically furred out on the inside. They want a drywall finish. So I don't always think that a insulated precast panel on an office building, I mean, if you're gonna fur it out, maybe they're gonna do it. I mean, if you're gonna fur it out, maybe it doesn't make sense, but if you're gonna leave it raw concrete or paint it, makes a lot of sense to make an insulated panel for an office or a residential. Let's see here. How do you deal with potential corrosion of the pre-stressing tendons in parking areas? I'll jump on that. Eric, maybe I'll defer to Eric. He's a engineer. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, and a lot of our floor products will actually cast an additive into the mix to prevent corrosion, and it's obviously part of the cover requirements on the pre-stressing within the length of the piece to have appropriate cover. And then at the ends where it is exposed, we'll put a mastic pane or a thickened element over the end to protect the strand. So rust of the actual pre-stressed tendons is actually pretty rare in these environments, at least in our environment, I should say, on the East Coast. Yeah, I'd say- Yeah, are there any... Oh, go ahead. Jim, are you in control of the presentation? I mean, can you go back to... Somewhere I had a... There was a double T. Oh, yeah. Just like what a double T looks like. So the other part of that is it's different. There's a double T right there on top left. So the pre-stressing strand, that's the primary reinforcing, is running through the double T stems, the vertical there. And it's far away from the top where cars are coming in. Like in our area, we'd do a double T with a two-inch deck and they'd pour field topping. I think Midwest, back East, maybe they're doing pre-top T, so that deck might be four or five inches thick. And so the cars are driving on that. And okay, if they got snow or rain or whatever, that stuff's going to a drain, but it's sitting up on top of the deck. Well, the strand is down low. All your primary steel is down low. So you're never gonna get corrosion or you're never gonna get really water penetrating the T, getting to the strand. So unlike like a cast-in-place slab that might be six inches thick or eight inches thick, they have post-tensioning cable running through there. And so it's draping through that slab. And so you might have areas where the post-tensioning strand is maybe within an inch or two of the surface, the driving surface. So you get a crack in that, and then certainly you could get water getting to the post-tensioning duct. Then that becomes a structural issue. In a precast system, you're not gonna have a structural issue. You might have a cosmetic issue somewhere if you get some freestyle, but you're not gonna have a structural issue. Are there any different maintenance considerations for this type of parking application versus just the standard precast parking deck that's not mixed use? Or is it pretty much the same thing? I'd say it's a little different because you're parking underneath a building. So you're not really seeing weather. I mean, yeah, cars are gonna bring in snow and rain, right? But it's not like it's an open parking garage. You're not gonna see the weather like you typically would on a standalone parking garage. Yeah, and typically on these buildings, the parking is tempered. So you're not gonna go through the police as well. Here's one more question here from the attendees. This is another sort of engineering question, but are there any difficulties getting the precast floor slab to act as a diaphragm for the transfer of horizontal loads to the core of the parking garages? Is it preferred to use a minimum structural topping of at least like three inches? No, this is a really good question. I mean, it's all geographic based too, depending on the diaphragm action requirements for seismic. There might need to be a topping slab, but where we design our work, a lot of times it's just a poor strip, which is about three to four feet around the perimeter that loose quartz steel or embedded steel in the plant and then welded T to T joints at the end can comprise the diaphragm and then weld back to the lateral walls or stair towers. So it's pretty simple. Wouldn't say it's easy, but it's simple to incorporate into a garage like this or a podium. When you get into the more heavy duty seismic analysis, then yeah, towards the other coast, you probably need a topping slab. All right. Well, you know what guys, I wanna say a big thanks to our presenters today, Eric, Dan, Augie and Jim. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences on these projects and to take part in this round table. It's really appreciated. Thanks to everybody for attending. Glad you could join us today. And just a reminder that this is just part one of a two-part series and part two is coming up on December 7th, 2.30 p.m. Eastern time. Join us for that. It's Precast Concrete Systems and Mixed-Use Parking Applications. In this presentation, THA Consulting will share their design and engineering experience in a 90-minute program. Todd Helmer, CEO and Kevin Kerrigan, VP, will review innovations and trends in the parking sector. The program will provide a detailed analysis of design and technical considerations comparing different structural and framing systems for mixed-use commercial structures, incorporating parking facilities. The course will also discuss maintenance recommendations for parking structures. For additional information, visit pci.org slash education. Learning objectives for this upcoming course. I'll explore how to integrate the parking, Precast parking framing into mixed-use applications such as housing, commercial and industrial buildings. Examine code requirements on occupancy and use classifications. Fire design requirements, lateral load resisting systems for mixed-use structural systems. We'll review coordination requirements for MEP and FP early in the design phase and describe analysis of the design and cost impacts for all Precast mixed-use building applications. So again, that's December 7th at, ooh, it's one o'clock Eastern time. Sorry, I had the timer on, I think, in the last slide. But anyway, look for information and upcoming emails and online at pci.org slash education. Do wanna thank everybody again for joining us today and keep an eye out for those. You'll get an email regarding credits later this week. Thanks for being with us and have a great day.

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