CDC's New HQ

$115 Million Building Will Be CDC's New Campus Headquarters

By Scott Judy

Two years of preconstruction communication between contractor, designer and owner is paying off on the complicated, $115 million new headquarters building for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The project is ahead of schedule, despite complexities such as a nonlinear building and adherence to LEED standards.

"Because there was such a gracious preconstruction phase, the design team had the opportunity to (provide) very good documents," said Jason Hodges, senior project for Skanska USA Building, Atlanta. "We're not constantly waiting on answers to questions. We've been able to flow seamlessly from foundations to structure to skin to interior build-out."

Skanska won a national preconstruction services solicitation in September 2001 and worked on design until September 2003 with project architect Thompson Ventulett Stainback & Associates of Atlanta. In August 2003, CDC awarded Skanska an $82 million construction-management contract. Notice to proceed was given on Jan. 5, 2004, with substantial completion set for August - a 20-month timeframe, compared to the 24-month preconstruction period.

Micah Rosen, project manager for TVS, said the lengthy preconstruction ultimately allowed the firm to customize final documents in accordance with the contractor's planned approach.

"We evaluated just about everything," Rosen said. "So we kind of tailored the documents to how they were going to build the building. You don't usually get that opportunity on a fast-track project."

David Shoffner, construction manager for CDC, said there also has been direct involvement from the owner.

"The big key to keeping this project on schedule is the communication and coordination between the government, Skanska and TVS," he said. "We're extremely open. We haven't postured at all."

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Going Up

From the beginning, there were problems - but plans were already in place to address them. For instance, the area is renowned for its inconsistent underground, and the team knew that the initial borings might not have revealed the entire picture.

"One of the things you anticipate in DeKalb County is that once you get in the ground, you're going to find something different from what a dozen borings can show you," Rosen said. "It's like stalagmites down there. We knew as soon as Skanska started digging that we'd be going back to the structural engineer and making a few changes."

The team's existing contingency plan for just this scenario enabled it to work around the issue and keep ahead of schedule. The project used a combination of drilled piers, caissons and spread footers.

Once out of the ground, the reinforced concrete, 12-story building started going up on a roughly nine-day-per-floor cycle. A curve along both sides of the building complicated this work somewhat, though, Hodges said.

"The uniqueness of the curve didn't allow us to fly it, so we had to conventionally frame it," he said. "We broke up the building into three pours, and almost every third day we were pouring concrete." Each floor measured about 26,000 sq. ft., with pours divided approximately equally.

TVS used masonry and precast for the building's lower exterior, and a curtain wall system above that.

"We were looking for a progressive image for CDC, but counterbalanced with permanence and groundedness that you'd expect from a federal government project," Rosen said. "So we basically came out of the ground with masonry and precast concrete. The solid materials really form an anchor. And then we go to a curtain wall system."

The project topped out Oct. 29.

Radial Design

TVS used the curving radius design to fit the 364,400-sq.-ft. office building into the site's curved boundary line.

"Drawing was interesting," Rosen said. "It wasn't some arbitrary thing. A curved building maximizes their ability to use a limited site."

The curvy design impacted the contractors, too.

"It made for a challenge as far as layout," Hodges said. "We had to train a lot of the subcontractors on how to use advanced instrumentation to be able to take advantage of computer-aided software and being able to lay out curtain walls and everything on skews and radiuses."

Here, too, the heavy preconstruction input benefited the contractors.

"That (curving) affords a lot of opportunities for dynamics in the curtain walls," Hodges said. "That input at the early stages created a lot fewer headaches once we got out in the field." As a result, curtain-wall sub JAMCO of Atlanta has been able to stay ahead of its planned pace.

"JAMCO adapted to the curvature very well, and they're ahead of schedule drying in the building," he added.

CDC's Shoffner said numerous other subcontractors on the job were consulted during the preconstruction phase and provided good ideas on how to build the project. For example, mechanical sub McKenney's of Atlanta suggested that it custom fabricate the pipe at its own shop, instead of using more standard components and an excessive amount of joints to facilitate the curves. The end result was both faster installation and higher quality.

"That's something they did to keep meeting the schedules, but it also gave better durability because now we're not stressing joints," Shoffner said.

Inside

The CDC's expectations and requirements for this office building were different from a commercial owner's. The facility couldn't be lavish, but it needed to be built to last an expected 50- to 75-year lifespan.

"We had to pay special attention to what was specified in terms of its durability and life-cycle costs," Rosen said. "We knew we better not create anything that's too delicate."

For instance, the architect made judicious use of interior glass and other durable materials.

At the same time, the team is aiming for LEED certification, so issues such as indoor air quality, health quality and use of local materials had to be considered.

Rosen said the LEED standard didn't require too many items that the firm hasn't been using already.

"It did not seem like a huge step for us," he said. "We're using an energy-recover unit on the roof, but we've been using those for years."

The exterior curtain-wall system was designed to allow daylight to flow into the building without overheating employee workspaces. Daylighting is another popular LEED feature.

"That is really going to help with the daylighting - getting that natural light into the inner core of the building," Shoffner said. "Halfway into the building, it's still going to get natural light in there."

For Hodges, this was his first LEED effort, and he said it was a learning process.

"The biggest thing was getting our arms around the amount of documentation involved," he added. "But our big focus has been on acquiring the local and regional materials, so there's been a lot of coordination between us and the subs for products to be harvested, manufactured and brought in from the local market."

Another focus has been on reducing construction waste, another LEED standard. To date, both Skanska and CDC estimate that 80 percent of material leaving the site has been recycled.

There's plenty left to do, of course. The project was about 55 percent completed in January. But the owner is definitely happy so far.

"From the government's standpoint, this is an excellent project," Shoffner said. "We've got a great rapport with the whole team and a good understanding of how things are going. The expectations are that we're going to proceed on just like we are and at the end we're going to turn around and say, 'That was a darned good project. Let's do it again.'"