Project Team
Owner: South Florida Water Management District
Construction Manager: Stiles Construction Co., Fort Lauderdale.
Architect: Hunton Brady Pryor Maso, Orlando

Centex Rooney Construction Co., Plantation, contracted with the state of Florida's Department of Management Services, the agent for the owner, to provide new office and warehouse buildings for the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), West Palm Beach.

The project team of owners, designers, construction manager and subcontractors worked together for two years using the construction management at-risk delivery method from schematic design to the delivery of the building. The construction period spanned from March 2001 to May 2002.

The scope of work included site improvements, a new three-story, 120,000-sq.-ft. office building, a new 10,000-sq.-ft. warehouse, demolition of an existing structure, and construction of a parking lot.

The new office building is a three-story, tilt-up concrete structure with a structural steel skeleton. Its two-story main entrance includes curving walls, ceiling and planters that echo the shape of the building's arched roof.

The building's most striking feature is its curved, arched roof. The barrel-vaulted roof spans across the building's east-west axis, and runs nearly completely from the south end to the north. Evident from the nearby West Palm Beach International Airport, the roof hints at the adjacent curved atrium roof of SFWMD's main office building.

The mass of the roof is visually enhanced by nonstructural outriggers that appear to support it, but merely serve the practical purpose of concealing the massive downspouts required to drain off the one acre of curved metal roofing.

One of the unique construction challenges came from the project's proximity to the flight paths of the West Palm Beach International Airport. Because the Federal Aviation Administration had mandated a "ceiling height" of less than 350 ft. for all construction cranes, the contractors had to reschedule the job, just before erecting the structure, in order to use smaller cranes and erect the steel from inside the building. Coordination was required to stage the steel erection so as not to interfere with the numerous support braces required to support the 14-in.-thick tilt-up panels.