The Georgia Aquarium

Intense Project is Pushing Contractors to Their Limits

By Scott Judy

Bernie Marcus's extraordinary gift to the people of Atlanta, the city where he co-founded his Home Depot business empire, is coming alive near Centennial Park.

With an overall value of more than $200 million, the Georgia Aquarium is certainly a generous and visionary gift. Touted as one of the largest aquariums in the world, it will reportedly feature more than 55,000 animals from approximately 500 species and an estimated 5 million gallons of fresh and saltwater.

Approximately 25 percent of the state-of-the-art facility's 450,000-sq.-ft. of space will be able to be used for educational purposes, and officials are expecting to teach 70,000 students per year about the underwater world. It will also feature a 17,000-sq.-ft. ballroom that can accommodate up to 2,000 people for an event. Promotional material states that officials are expecting two million visitors within the first year.

This gift will unveil itself in the latter part of this year, or perhaps early 2006, as originally scheduled. For now, though, for the hundreds of men and women building it, this underwater fantasyland remains strictly a mountainous undertaking, the size and degree of which they may never experience again.

"This is the most intense project - for everybody within our company - that we've ever been involved in," said Eric Young, division manager for general contractor Brasfield & Gorrie of Kennesaw, Ga. "It's probably the most complex (aquarium) structure we've seen anywhere. With all of the aquariums (we've visited), I've never seen anything like it."

Dwayne Strickland, general superintendent for Brasfield & Gorrie, said the facility will contain the largest closed-loop aquarium piping system in the world. "As we understand, there's nothing in the United States that compares to this," he added.

Unmatched Scope?

Strickland may be right. As a comparison, the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago features about 4.5 million gallons between its original aquarium and a newer Oceanarium facility completed in 1991. More to the point, the 3-million-gallon, 170,000-sq.-ft. Shedd Oceanarium took roughly 3.5 years from groundbreaking until completion.

In short, the Georgia Aquarium will have an extra 2 million gallons of water, more than 2.5 times the space and will be built one year faster.

Additionally, the project's 100,000 yds. of concrete - for both the aquarium and parking deck - is roughly double the amount the Brasfield & Gorrie used to build the Georgia Dome. More than 150 subcontractors and suppliers are working the job. Budget negotiations between the contractor and owner's agent required five consecutive weeks of day-long meetings to finalize project costs.

And yet, for Brasfield & Gorrie, pursuing this project came down to a couple of guys who wanted to take a chance.

"We weren't even going to chase this job, that's the funny thing," Young said. Every other division manager had passed on pursuing this sketchily detailed project when Young got a call from his boss one night while Young was coaching pee-wee football.

"He said, 'If you want to chase it, we'll chase it. If you don't want to chase it, we'll pass,'" Young recounted. "I said let's chase it."

But at the time, "We didn't even know what it was," Young said. "It wasn't released. It was only supposed to be $100 million. And they were just giving us these little boxes on a piece of paper."

The contractor's field staff was hesitant, too, Young said, but then Strickland stepped up.

"Dwayne really wanted to do it," Young added. "He said, 'I won't put my career on hold as a general superintendent, but I'll do this one personally, while I'm overseeing other projects.'"

As promised, Strickland not only oversees the aquarium project but about eight others, too.

The story of the schedule is a similar tale. Strickland, Young and Michael Freberg headed up Brasfield & Gorrie's preconstruction efforts and developed a 30-month overall project schedule based on "a few napkin sketches," Young said.

The original is still hanging on a project manager's office wall, but a more thorough, 37-page version has since been created that contains details on roughly 2,300 activities. (Another version exceeds 80 pages.) Young said the two documents are "almost identical."

"We're off on a few things here and there," he said. "We actually started a few things earlier than we thought we could."

The Project

Brasfield & Gorrie is working as a general contractor, self-performing all of the forming, placing and finishing of the 100,000 yds. of concrete and formwork for both the aquarium and parking deck. Heery International of Atlanta is working alongside as program manager. Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates of Atlanta is the project architect.

The contractor broke ground with grading work on May 29, 2003. The value of the firm's contract with the Georgia Aquarium was later increased with the addition of the parking deck.

"We actually started planning for (the parking deck) as we were coming out of the ground (with the aquarium)," said Chris Britton, senior project manager for Brasfield & Gorrie. "We did some special designing to be able to build the parking deck without affecting the work taking place (at the aquarium)."

That was necessary due to the site's already tight conditions.

Strickland explained: "We've got a 10-acre site. Counting the parking deck, we've got eight acres under roof. The other two acres are total hardscape. So at the end of the day we've got no room."

Berkel & Co. installed approximately 2,500 auger-cast piles for the aquarium structure, while Brasfield & Gorrie built the pile caps and spread footers, then placed and finished all vertical and horizontal concrete. The most intense concrete work was in support of the aquarium tanks while forming the acrylic openings inside the tanks.

"It was the most expensive concrete I've ever done," Young said. "It's literally two to three times more expensive than normal concrete." Numerous admixtures, used to combat saltwater intrusion, shrinkage cracks and other issues, added to the material cost.

The contractor used Lafarge's Agilia brand of self-leveling concrete to construct the intricate, nonlinear tank structures. Walls measured between 30 and 36 in. thick and as much as 32 ft. high. Individual pours covered wall sections measuring between 20 and 50 ft. wide.

Regardless of the wall's configuration, the Agilia concrete would fully fill out the form, with no vibration necessary, Young said. "When you broke the forms out, there wasn't even a bughole," he added.

The process took considerable testing at Lafarge's plant to ensure the product would perform up to its promise in the field. While such a technology innovation helped, Strickland shrugged it off. "We're still pouring concrete; we're still doing formwork," he said. "It's the same basic principles."

The contractor is already releasing certain areas to the owner. This process began early this year and will continue gradually through project completion.

Other Challenges

The life-support systems for this aquarium are similarly sizable. Though McKenney's had never done anything quite like this, Brasfield & Gorrie chose the Atlanta-based subcontractor based on its past relationship with the firm.

The systems are unique. Despite their huge capacity, the contractors reported that the aquarium's life-support systems will actually only waste about 1,000 gallons per year - or less than three gallons per day.

"All of the water is completely recirculated," Britton said. "They'll use more water flushing the toilets in a month than the actual aquarium life-support systems."

While the concrete and piping systems are major hurdles, Young said the biggest obstacles left may be in punching the job out.

"We're actually starting to punch stuff now," he said. "But that could kill us. If we don't get it punched out before we open, the quality won't be where it needs to be."

Since last summer, the team has been working second and third shifts, and most subs are putting in an average of about 56 hours per week.

Still, despite the team's progress to date, the schedule will remain a daunting task. "It's all we can do," Young said. "On some (activities) we're ahead and some we're behind. We've got to stay on top of everything."