Hello everybody, I am Jim Schneider, the Executive Director of PCI Mountain States. I'll be your moderator for today's webinar titled, RAMSA Precast Case Studies in Institutional Buildings. Alternative options to building enclosures are evaluated on every project. Often architectural precast is selected for its aesthetic versatility, its ability to collaborate with precast producers to find optimal and creative solutions, and due to accelerated construction benefits. Our presenter, Tony McConnell, will review three different projects that illustrate how architectural precast concrete helped his firm achieve client project and program goals. This webinar is sponsored by PCI Mid-Atlantic in conjunction with a broader effort by PCI regions all around the United States to deliver online learning to design and construction professionals. Be sure to contact your local PCI region to learn more about online learn at lunch opportunities for your firms. Contact information for your local chapter is available at pci.org slash regions. This webinar is registered for one hour of continuing education credit and you will earn one PDH or one HSWLU with AIA. To receive credit, you must attend the full webinar and provide complete registration information. If an AIA number was provided at the time of registration, your attendance will be reported to AIA. Within one week of completion of the presentation, you will receive an email from RCEP to download your certificate. If there are any groups in attendance, we do have a group attendance form you can download in the handout section. That can be emailed to Ruth Lehman, whose email address is on the form. Also in the handout section, you will find a regions map and a PDF of today's presentation. During the presentation, you may ask questions through the questions function on your screen. We should have a little time at the end for a question and answer session and try to get to as many questions as we can. Today's presenter is Anthony McConnell and he is an associate at Robert M. Stern Architects. A classically trained architect, Tony's work at the firm has focused on academic and institutional projects, including a presidential library and several buildings for Marist College. Most recently, a natural science classroom building and a new home for the fashion, art, and digital media programs within a renovated industrial building. He also served as project manager for a performing arts center at Villanova University. Tony is currently working on the Racklin Murphy Museum of Art, the anchor for a new arts district at his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. Thank you so much for being with us today, Tony. Looking forward to your presentation, so please take it away. Thank you very much, Jim. As Jim mentioned, my name is Tony McConnell and I work with Robert Stern Architects. Robert Stern Architects is a firm of about 265 people with architects, interior designers, and supporting staff. We've been around for about 50 years and established a pretty strong international reputation, especially with leading design and a wide experience in residential, commercial, and institutional work. Specifically, as Jim mentioned, I have focused on the institutional side of things. But as you can see, RAMSA continues to do a lot of work with precast. I'm showing two examples here to kind of show a range. I'm going to talk about some projects that are a little bit different than these, but ideally we hope that this presentation helps to encourage precast manufacturers and other architects to push the envelope of what precast can do, especially in architectural precast. And as RAMSA tries to push what we do, we have partners who can grow along with us and everybody working together can push this field into the future. We have four objectives today. We want to make sure we discuss why precast can be the best solution, specifically in institutional projects, but it can apply for other projects as well, obviously. We're going to explain the benefits of working with precast as a hybrid or specifically an all-precast project. We're going to talk about working relationship with precast producers and the expectations regarding technology interfaces and shot drawing preparation. And we're going to review how to treat joints and connection details to achieve the best aesthetics and project outcomes. I'm going to talk about these projects in a chronological order, and I want to do that because I want to guide you all along with me with the lessons that I learned through each of these projects. I'm going to repeat a couple of things that I learned in each project, techniques that we used, and I'm going to try to bring you guys along with me as I learn these things. And the chronological order obviously helps with that. The first example that I'm going to talk about is the Marist College Natural Sciences and Allied Health Building. We finished this project in 2016, and it was the very first precast project that I ever worked on. So, what lessons did I learn from this project? First, joint locations. Never having worked on a precast project before, it was an eye-opening experience to figure out where do those joints go, how do we hide those joints, ones that we can't hide, how do we make them disappear as much as possible? We were very happy with how the joints turned out on this project, so it was a good lesson learned. We're also going to talk about mock-ups. Mock-ups are an extremely important part of precast, and as I understand, PCI is in the process of developing some more standards for mock-ups. And I think that's a huge part of the development between the manufacturer and the architect. Just to make sure that standards are set and we know fully what we're going to be achieving, mock-ups do a great job of that. I'm also going to talk about being creative. This is a theme that I'm going to repeat several times in this presentation. It's really important for sides of the design, the design team, and the manufacturers to be as creative as possible. I'm going to encourage manufacturers to get involved early, and I'm going to encourage architects to engage their precasters early and come to the table with creative ideas. As I mentioned before, if we are creative, we can push this industry who knows where. What we can do with precast will continue to develop and do more and more amazing things. Finally, I'm going to talk about pre-construction coordination. Pre-construction or coordination equals safety. This is a really important part. Obviously, anytime we're swinging large panels around on a job site, we need to be extremely safe about that. It also comes with efficiencies. Of course, if we can have better pre-construction coordination and everything goes smoothly, it's going to save money, which everybody likes to do. Marist has this beautiful campus right along the Hudson River. The job site that we're going to talk about is located here in the yellow. This was the first major academic building that the college located on their east side campus. Their campus is predominantly this stone aesthetic with brick detailing and either natural stone, in our case, precast accents. On the far right is one of their oldest buildings on campus, on the far left is one of RAMS's first projects at Marist, and in the middle is one of our newer projects. You can see a theme here. We were challenged to figure out how can we make precast work to fit this aesthetic. Obviously, kind of a unique look for precast. Here's a plan. This building was roughly about 61,500 square feet. It was four stories tall. We had one below grade level and then three above. As you can see from the plan, it is fairly rectilinear. That did lend itself to being a precast project. We also benefited from it not being super tall. It allowed us to do our panels in some different orientations and get creative with our jointing. Speaking of the jointing and panelization, I mentioned this earlier, but this was a really important part of my learning on how to work with precast. I think that it's something that all architects need to understand a little bit, that this is going to be an extremely important part of every project. Getting a precast manufacturer on board early to help with either a design assist or even just reaching out to somebody that you've worked with before that might give you some advice. I highly encourage that because if you can have these things figured out before construction drawings are issued, your design is just going to be that much better. On this project, we had 163 panels. Our tallest elevation was 67 feet and that was to the top of the tower that you see on the left-hand side of this image. As I mentioned, you can see that we had some different orientations of the panels that really let us be creative and produce the best look for the project that we were looking for. Here's the finished elevation. This is the front view. As you can see, we were able to achieve that stone aesthetic with the brick detailing and the natural stone, in this case, precast aesthetics. Ultimately, we were very happy with how this fit onto campus. We think it did a great job. We're also very proud that we made what typically can look like an industrial kind of building with smokestacks and more industrial kind of feels to vent all of the science classrooms that were in this building. We really made it look more traditional and fit into the campus aesthetic. One of the unique things about this project, we did want to create a hierarchy between the front and the back. One of the ways that we did that was we utilized more exposed precast on the back instead of that very nice stone detailing. Not only did this allow us to save some money, but it also allowed us to utilize a different technique. It was a challenge. We didn't want this to look like it was secondhand or less detailed. We were challenged early on on how we can make this facade look just as nice and finished as the front, but still create that hierarchy I was talking about. I'll talk more about this and how we did that as I move forward. I talked a little bit about mockups. This was a project that we were able to do this was the first time RAMSA had ever done a stone clad precast building and we didn't really know how we were gonna get that stone applied. As many of you probably know, typically, especially if we're using brick, you would cast the brick right into the panel. You would lay the brick down, you would pour the concrete over top of it, your bricks already put in. That was obviously one of the first thoughts that we had was we would lay the stone down into the mold, we would pour the concrete over top of the bath, everything would be one piece, and we would be good to go. We had some concerns about that. We knew we had an aesthetic that the campus had that we needed to meet, and we weren't sure if that process was going to achieve what we were looking for. So of these three mockups, I'll work from right to left. The one on the far right, we laid the stones in the mold and formed the concrete around it. We mold those stones right into the panel. The one in the middle, we applied the stone after the concrete panel had been formed. We used a product called Laticrete and then we came back and point mortared the joints so that they look like they had a mortar to them. They look more realistic. And then the last one, we used a sand fill. We laid the stone in the mold, we filled the joints with sand, and then we poured the concrete. We were hoping that that would give it a little bit more of a realistic look. Ultimately, neither one of the panels that we cast the stone into the panel looked right. They just didn't have the right depth, the joints didn't look correct, and ultimately we felt that the post-applied stones worked the best. In the end, we were extremely happy with that solution, and we've utilized this technique in several other projects. There's a lot of things we like about it, and I'll continue to talk about that. So here's how we applied that stone. As I mentioned, we cast the panels first and then we applied the stone after the panels had been pulled out of their forms. In this case, the manufacturer wanted to apply them on panels that were set vertically. Ramsey encouraged this because we were able to review these panels in the orientation that we would see them on the building. This worked really well. I think there were some challenges to the manufacturer to make sure that they had enough space in their factory or in their yard to allow this to happen, but in the end it worked really well. You can see that they were able to maintain a consistent joint by using just filler pieces. I think they actually just used pieces of gyp. They stuck them on and then once it dried, they went back and pointed everything with a point mortar. This did a lot of things. It allowed us to review full color orientation so that we didn't have bunches of one color stone stuck in one corner or lots of little stones all in a bunch. We were able to review these pretty simply even with photos from the site and get those fixed before the panels showed up on the job site. That's a lot easier. You don't have to ship somebody up to the job site to fix those things. They can fix it right where they have all the tools that they need. It really turned out to be a great process and allowed for positive review. What was concerning about this, since we had never done it, was are these stones going to ever fall off? Is the Latticrete going to be strong enough? We actually did some pull tests on these and I encourage any of the manufacturers who are trying to be creative and find new ideas. Part of that creativity should be how can you prove to your clients and your architects that this is a safe and viable option. Think about different tests. We did this pull test and it turned out great because we actually pulled out the concrete. The Latticrete didn't fail. The stone didn't fail. It was ultimately the concrete panel that failed well above any of our standards that we needed to meet. Here's a panel once it's finished. This has been pointed. I will say the mortar is a little dark because it's still slightly wet, but we were very happy with how these turned out in the end. Again, you can see from this picture I would review all of this even if it was just with an email. We were able to review jointing, make sure the joints were consistent in size, make sure that the field of stone was what we were looking for, and ultimately this also helped the mason because they could kind of take a step back and review things for themselves even before they sent it to us. We were very happy with this product. I talked a little bit about jointing and mock-ups, both of those things. I think everybody should be architects should request and manufacturers should be prepared to provide mock-ups of the caulk joints not only to make sure that they're being constructed as expected, whether you need dual layers of caulk and backer rod to get your waterproofing, but also for aesthetic reasons. On the left-hand side of the screen, you can see two different color caulk joints. You can see a lighter color and a darker color. RAMSA originally thought we were going to like the lighter color and we had asked for those to be put in and mocked up. Once we saw them, we weren't real happy with them. They were too light and we felt that maybe we should look at a different color, so we had used the darker color in our stone fields. We put the two together. Ultimately, we were really happy with the darker color and we went in that direction. I think if we had known this and done this previously, we would have asked for a mock-up much earlier on and we would have been able to solve this very quickly. In the end, it wasn't a big deal, but as I said, mock-ups are super important. They help us kind of set the example and they give the architect something that they can physically look at. We might think we know all the answers. We absolutely do not know all the answers. Mock-ups help us get there. Again, with the stone mock-ups, it also is really nice that it gives you an example that you can always refer back to. If there's ever any questions, you can always go back to your mock-up and say, this is what we talked about, this is what we agreed to, this is what we want to move forward with. Same goes for these caulk joints. I talked a little bit about being creative. On this project, we knew we wanted to include some sort of figural detail at that tower. We decided, since this was a science building with an allied health aspect to it, that we would use the rod of Asclepius, which is a symbol associated with health care. Typically, this process would be a very tedious process. Ramsey would do a bunch of drawings. We would try to give dimensions to that drawing. A stone carver would carve that out of something. There would be many back and forth to finally get the final detail. Then the pre-casters can make a mold, get the molds cast, and put into a panel. We got real creative with this. We used a CNC mill in our model shop at Ramsey and milled out of high-density foam, the shield that you see on the left. We did a little hand carving. Since it was high-density foam, it was really easy. We shipped that to our pre-casters. They made the mold out of that. You can see in the computer screen just behind the high-density foam, they were able to mirror it so that we had different orientations of that shield. They were also able to cast that shield with anchors. You can see some of the anchors in the right-hand view. Ultimately, we were able to cast these into our tower, into the entablature, and they looked great. That whole process came about because we asked our pre-casters, how can we do this? How can we save some time on doing this? They worked with us, we worked with them, and we came up with a great solution. I really encourage everybody who's on the call today to start talking with each other. Start coming to the table with new ideas. I like to use the word, I'd rather hear people say, what can you do, not what can't you do. I mean, obviously, we have to be realistic, but the idea that the manufacturers know this industry better than the architects do, you're going to have better solutions than what we might propose. The architects are going to start thinking outside the box. We're going to try to come up with designs that fit the full aesthetic of the building, and I think between everybody working together, again, we're going to come to the best design possible. I talked a little bit about this before, but on this rear elevation, we wanted to create some sort of depth and variation in what is basically just exposed concrete. We didn't want this back to look less finished than the front or the other stone panels, and ultimately, we decided to do that with sandblasting different parts of the panels. So, we had, again, worked with our manufacturer, and they said that they were able to sandblast to different levels, and would be able to isolate different parts of the panels. So, the different pieces or the different parts that are sandblasted at different levels are not individual panels. They're only a portion of the panel. They're a portion of much larger pieces, and we were able to kind of identify which ones we wanted to be a one, two, or three level. They were able to sandblast it, and it really does start to make this look more like a natural stone building and not just exposed precast. We're real happy with how this turned out. It gave some variation to the back of this facade. It allowed it to look as finished as the rest of the building, but like I said before, we were able to save some money on the natural stone, and it did help us create a hierarchy between the front and the back of the building. I mentioned one of the lessons we learned on this project was pre-construction coordination is equal to safety. It also helps just help everything move smoothly, get built quickly. So, one of the reasons this was a lesson learned on this project was the steel for this project was an early bid package. We needed to have all of our connection details part of that package, but we did not have all of our detailing for the panels finished at that point. As I'm sure you can guess, that meant that we had connection points that were not coordinated and needed to be fixed. We didn't really know where those details were until we had a panel on the crane in position to be attached, and then we realized this connection detail is in the wrong spot. We need to move it. So, down comes the panel. Somebody with a welding torch or however we're going to fix it goes up, moves it over. Obviously, there's a delay in that. If we were lucky, we could move on to the next panel, but in most cases, we just had to wait till the details were fixed, and then the panel would go back up. The safety part of all this comes in when you have a panel that's going up and down on a crane. The more time that it's on that crane, you allow for more things to go wrong, and we really want this to go smoothly. When it can get picked up, put right on the building, connected, and secured, that's the safest way to do it. Having that pre-construction coordination to make sure that this all moves smoothly once the panels show up on site is by far the safest way to do it and will solve lots of problems. It also keeps your schedule moving smoothly and if you don't have delays you're not spending extra money to try to fix things. We did have some other issues on this project um specifically revolved around the pick diagrams and that was something that we our pick diagrams we we had a series of them but they weren't well thought through and in hindsight we should have spent some more pre-construction coordination on those pick diagrams. In this specific case I will give a lot of credit to our crane operator. He picked this as they thought best while he was lifting the panel he realized that there were some cracks on the panel so following all of his protocols he cleared the site told everybody he was going to set the panel down while he was setting that panel down the cattail at the bottom of the panel snapped the bottom of the panel hit the ground and the top pick points sheared off and the rest of the panel fell to the floor. Obviously the crane operated exactly what he needed to do and nobody was injured there was no problems but we have a panel that we have to replace you know now we can't install this panel on the scheduled day we're going to have to come back to it at a different time um how does that work with mobilization of that crane does a crane have to stay in that location can it move around and come back and those are all major schedule issues and then of course somebody had to pay to replace this piece so you know if we had that pick schedule figured out at a little more coordinated pre-construction we would have had left less problems and as I mentioned less safety concerns so again pre-construction coordination equals safety. The next project that I worked on with Precast was also at Marist College this was the McCann it's an athletics facility it's in addition to their existing gymnasium it was finished in 2020 this was a unique project because it was a hybrid envelope we had Precast and we had brick standard masonry wall brick so I'm going to talk a little bit about why we chose to do that but we also had I'm going to talk a little bit more about the brick on this project as well. So lessons learned on this project hybrid systems work you don't have to stick with one system just because you're using on one part of the project if it can benefit you consider multiple ultimately in this case we were trying to save money on the project and because of the height it afforded us some flexibility that brings me to that next one be flexible don't be nervous to explore new ideas or if something comes to the table through the design that you've not done again be creative come to the table with solutions try to work with you know architects be flexible and work with the pre-casters pre-casters be flexible and try to work with your architects if we can do that and especially we can do that early we want to be able to use technology to our advantage I'm going to talk a little bit about BIM modeling and I'm going to talk a little bit about coordination of those pick points and what we learned from our previous project and how can we change that and how did we change that on this project and then finally brick selection it's extremely important for many projects PCI has some very specific requirements for brick selection and that's what we're going to important for many projects PCI has some very specific standards for what brick should be used I'm going to talk about using bricks that don't meet PCI standards so we moved closer to the Hudson on campus you can see where we are with that yellow circle this project was also fairly rectilinear the south or the bottom right is the existing building we were building the top left this was about a 60,000 square foot addition again very rectilinear kind of lends itself to pre-cast as I mentioned we did use a hybrid system so the facade you see here was all hand laid brick and ultimately because this was a low enough facade we were able to see a financial savings in doing it a traditional brick wall compared to the precast however where we have the stone on the front of the building we saw savings by going to the precast and that is ultimately what helped us make our decision here's the front of the building this was all precast and this also did allow us to gain some schedule time you know precast panels typically go up a little faster than a standard brick wall again because of the height they were about equal here's that brick wall that I was talking about this was all a hand laid brick we were real happy with how the two turned out in comparison to each other that was a really important part for us we didn't want them to look completely foreign to each other but in the end it's very hard to tell the difference between the hand laid and the precast I mentioned before that we were going to come back to how we applied the stone so this was a different manufacturer and this manufacturer actually had a sand bed in their yard that they could lay these panels flat they wanted to utilize this sand bed rams was okay with this but we did have some reservations our biggest concern was how we were going to be able to how would we be able to review these if we couldn't go to the job site ultimately this worked out well for the installation the masons were able to review their stone before they stuck it on with the laticrete they were able to kind of mock it up and make sure that they had the right blends they weren't they didn't have clusters of small stones or joints or anything like that they were able to or joints that went against what we were expecting but it didn't make review from rams's point of view hard unless we were there you can really see that with this picture if I received this picture I can review what's closest to me very easily but the stuff farther away is a lot harder to review ultimately we were able to review all these panels before they got to the job site and we were happy with all the panels that came to the job site it just took a little bit more we needed more pictures or we needed to make more trips down to the job down to the factory I will bring this back up one more time on the last project and what we utilize to try to solve this problem I talked about making sure that we had we use technology to our advantage so we did do some BIM coordination with this project it allowed us to make sure that our connection points were coordinated more carefully with the panels but ultimately the thing that I was most happy with but ultimately the thing that I was most happy with our manufacturer came to the site before any panels showed up they used the laser to shoot all of the connection points and verify they were in the right place I think we did have six connection points that were slightly off we were able to move those connection points while the steel erectors were still on site so they didn't have to remobilize move them into the right locations and we didn't have any connection points that misaligned once we had panels up on the crane as I mentioned before that pre-construction coordination equals safety the panels were on the crane for a shorter period of time they were fastened to the building quicker and ultimately we didn't have any panels that we had to set down and redo so our schedule was able to move forward quickly and we didn't have any failed panels that we had to you know somebody had to pay to fix so you know financially speaking it's also more efficient so you're trying to use technology to your advantage is something I really encourage we continue to have advances in these kinds of technologies things get cheaper to use every day we have more computer programs that can help us and I think that I encourage everybody both architecture side and precast side to continue to use what technology is available to help this project process move more smoothly okay let's talk about brick so I mentioned that we wanted to use a brick that was not to PCI standards most people on this call recognize this image this is your standard brick mold this is how we mold or we hold bricks in place make sure that they get the right joint depth when we pour a panel that works great when you have a standard brick that meets all PCI standards but what happens when you don't so Marist has a very specific Marist blend that brick is made by Glenberry and it is very specifically a hand molded brick hand molded bricks are very they have edges they have curves in them but that was the um in our case we really feel that that hand molded look really adds to a more traditional look and we need to match what was on campus so we kind of had a standard we needed to meet this also falls into being flexible um our manufacturers were willing to be a little flexible with us on this give it a shot let's do some mock-ups now coming back to that mock-up idea again and ultimately we came up with this mock-up on the left hand side of the screen this was after one power washing the bricks were waxed and then power washed that wax helped flake off most of the bleed but you can see there's still some bleed on there we asked the manufacturer to power wash it one more time i would say that got rid of another 80 of the bleed that you see on here and i think ultimately on my punch list for this project i probably had about 15 locations that we asked them to come out and knock off some of the bleed they were able to do that with a hammer i don't think that it took them too long and in the whole scope of things for 15 locations that was pretty good um so we're real happy with this and we would not have been able to do this if the manufacturer wasn't willing to be flexible and try something new the other one that i think is really important when talking about bricks is don't be scared to use shape bricks it's one of the things that ramsa is always concerned about we don't want our precast panels to look thin you know so oftentimes we're using a thin brick situation and if you see the side of that brick it's immediately recognizable that it's not a full brick and it's just a thin veneer it doesn't look as traditional it doesn't look as real especially on this project where we are matching a hand laid wall we needed to make sure that we had some of these l-shaped bricks and and return bricks so again you know being flexible and being creative with your solutions we can still utilize a thin brick but make sure we're achieving the aesthetics that we're all looking for so this is the final project that i'm going to talk about this is my most recent precast project this was the john and joanne mullen center for the performing arts at villanova this was finished in 2020 um you're going to see some differences on this project it was significantly more complicated as far as the massing and by far the most panels of any product that i've ever worked with so some of the lessons i learned on this project bim management this kind of falls into using technology to our advantage but the pre-cord pre-construction coordination through bin management was tremendous on this project i've used bin management and bim coordination for all trades in most of my projects and at this point i expect it to be utilized in all my projects um and it is extremely successful to the point that we know within an eighth of an inch where things should be and compared to let's say eight years ago that's kind of a tremendous achievement so use bin management to your advantage i know it can be utilized for precast we did it on this project with huge success be creative with technology um i've talked about technology and how we can use it our to our advantage and i've talked about being creative combine those two what new things can we do with them what new kinds of panels can we do um how can we solve some unique problems with what technology we have available to that to us um again come to the table with what can we do and not what can't we do just going to make a better design and then finally explore complex details you know come to the table early to your designers designers go to your precasters early we want to do this can we do it um and then work out what you can it i was amazed at what we could achieve with precast on this project um just because we were able to engage our precasters early on ramza actually has a pretty strong history at villanova university you can see all of the yellow buildings are ramza projects including the overpass from the main basilica to the south side of campus lancaster avenue is a fairly busy road but the university wanted to add some housing on the south side the idea of ramza's design was to create kind of a village streetscape that would really set this nice facade along lancaster avenue being very welcoming to the campus on the north um but also really set a an edge to the southern campus um ultimately we did end up adding the overpass to make sure that the students had a safe way to go back and forth the overpass was a very unique project because it utilized precast concrete they did some amazing precast pre-stressed panels to get the bridge part of it that they were able to install in one evening over lancaster avenue so that they didn't have to shut down that busy street for more than one evening and then we applied the stone afterwards the dormitory buildings are all a standard masonry wall this street facade kind of sets us up very nicely for this beautiful view right to the performing arts building this sets up a very nice dynamic between the original campus and this performing arts building but because of these relationships the precast building needed to meet the aesthetic of the campus with the stone and how we did those and how we cast those so that really did drive us back to the tried and true applying the stone after the panels had been pulled from their forms here's a plan this was a about a 77,000 square foot building as you can see different than the two projects previously this building has a curve and i'm sure a lot of you are thinking a curve how the heck did you cast curved panels this was a challenge but we were able to achieve this and that whole curve is precast i mentioned earlier that this building has more panels so this panel head was completely precast on the exterior facade we had 400 panels you can see there's a lot more massing step backs we had a curve we had several towers we had gables in general just a much more complicated project we also had some very fine detailing at the windows and again working with our manufacturers early on we were able to utilize more delicate smaller precast pieces to create some very nice and finely detailed delicate windows that was something that when i first started working with precast i would have said we've never been able to achieve with precast but with the coordination with our manufacturers we were absolutely able to do those and they turned out very nice so here's that front facade you can see the curve front and center on this image that curve is all precast we actually utilize a curved mold but the back of these is flat and that actually allowed us to do a couple of things first it meant that we did not have to curve our steel that was going to be a significant increase in cost to the steel by keeping the back of the panel straight not only were we able to pour these in a pretty traditional way but we were able to with the curve and the bottom part of the mold and then the flat part on the top of the concrete where it naturally flattened out but also obviously making the steel straight was just a much easier solution for the structural system you can see in this image how many setbacks there are and the gables and how those turned out very complicated even towards the back we still have gables we do have one facade of all exposed precast still detailed with all now if there's a we could have achieved this with BIM coordination so the model that you see on the left in red is the steel manufacturer's BIM model the tan in both left and right images is the BIM model from our precast manufacturers on the right image the gray is the BIM model from our concrete supplier so that we could review all the slab edges we're able to bring all these models together and ultimately coordinate everything within a quarter of an inch an eighth of an inch we had almost no conflicts I won't say that we didn't have any but with as much massing changes and the detail in all of this building it was pretty tremendous how accurate we were able to get the panels ultimately we were able to lay I say we our manufacturers were able to erect all 400 panels in roughly eight weeks no hiccup major hiccup I solely due to this BIM coordination okay I talked about using technology to our advantage and getting creative with technology I had mentioned before that having these panels with the stone when they were laid flat was a little bit of a problem because we couldn't see them so you can see on the left we still run into that problem I can't review what's on the far side of this our manufacturers came up with a phenomenal idea they went out they bought a drone they flew the drone 20 feet above the panels and they took the picture on the right we are able to review most of our panels with this technique without having to go to the job site again being creative coming to the table with unique solutions with technology available saved us a lot of time and we got great details ultimately from this project I also talked about getting creative with complex details so the university had asked us to incorporate crosses on this project and ultimately we thought that this tower had some corner crenellations let's incorporate that into let's incorporate the cross into the corner this is a very complicated precast detail and we were not convinced that we could do it and we would have to simplify this but ultimately working in three dimensions as you can see here our shop drawings came out amazing and again BIM coordination allowed those shop drawings for such a complicated piece to come out once these were produced these details looked phenomenal you can also see some of the detailing that we had for the shield that's a little more standard but ultimately the complex details of this project turned out great because we were able to use the BIM and our manufacturers came to us with good solutions and creative ways to accomplish these early on that's all I have for you today I thank everybody for joining me and I really enjoyed presenting today thank you very much Tony I appreciate it very uh interesting presentation and we really enjoyed seeing those case examples thank you very much um I'm just looking to see we have at least a question here if and if anyone by the way has additional questions they want to throw in please feel free to do that now uh but one that we have here says uh recently heard the term c-sections mentioned on two of your projects what are they and how did you accomplish thinner sections I'm not familiar with c-sections actually I have to believe that they are thinner panels with more rebar that's something I would have to get back to you on okay you can do a follow-up on that I'm just going to give uh if anybody else has additional questions um give you a moment to do that uh and in the meantime while we're doing that I'll quick take care of a little bit of housekeeping here and first of all thank you everybody for attending today appreciate that thank you very much again Tony that was a really great presentation thanks for taking the time to share your expertise with us today just a reminder to all attendees on this that you'll be receiving an email from RCEP where you'll be able to download your certificate also be sure to complete the one minute survey at the conclusion of this webinar this will also provide an opportunity to ask additional questions or request follow-up all right not seeing anything else coming through at this moment so I think that will do it for us today again thank you very much Tony for taking the time you're welcome thank you everybody I appreciate it all right everybody have a great afternoon and be well take care of yourselves thank you

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