The World Trade Center's Tower Crews Get the Royal Treatment

For workers raising the Western Hemisphere's soon-to-be tallest skyscraper, “fast food” has an extra dollop of meaning.

With hundreds of eateries in Lower Manhattan, crews erecting the frame of the $3.2-billion One World Trade Center—on schedule to stand 1,776 ft when substantially complete in fall 2013—have only two options when the lunch bell rings: They can frequent a Subway sandwich shop on high or “brown bag” it. However, they can't leave the premises.

The 36 shipping containers that house the shop are dubbed “the hotel” because they also contain lockers and restrooms. The hotel scheme not only minimizes vertical commute times, it prevents hoist congestion.

“The goal is to make the whole tower job move up as if workers are on the ground,” not 900 or 1,200 ft in the air, says Mel Ruffini, project executive for the local Tishman Construction Corp., a unit of AECOM Technology. The construction manager is under contract with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to build 1 WTC's $2.1-billion core and shell.

The hotel is novel in its own right, but it serves more than one purpose.

As part of its $256-million contract, local steel contractor DCM USA Erectors Inc. also designed the hotel to stabilize the tower's steel perimeter-tube moment-resisting frame. Under Tishman's “steel first” scheme, the hotel minimizes the needed erection-steel until the structural concrete core, 10 floors behind the steel, catches up.

There's more. Each half of the three-level hotel sits in the core void like two square donuts, each with a tower-crane mast that rises through the donut's center. The location puts a protective roof over Collavino Construction Co.'s concrete crews, who work below the ironworkers.

The roof is also a shield that allows the slower concrete operation to continue in the rain, allowing the concrete to keep pace with the steel. And hatches in the hotel floors let crews install risers on weekends, when the steel and concrete operations are idle.

The hotel is but one prop in a meticulously staged play to meet a demanding schedule for the 3.5-million-sq-ft 1 WTC, originally named the Freedom Tower. Having two tower- crane hooks for two steel operations is another prop that lets DCM jump each crane separately, followed by each hotel half. And that avoids a shutdown of steel erection. “It's like a vertical freight train,” says Ruffini.

A sky-lobby hoist system is another part of Tishman's efficiency plan. To avoid disruptive exterior-hoist shutdowns when winds exceed 30 mph, Atlantic Scaffolding, LaPorte, Texas, is providing hoists inside the building. The hoist scheme had to be planned with the structural engineer because creating a 70-story shaft to floor 100 required leaving out permanent floor beams temporarily and adding temporary beams.

Staying Out of Each Other's Hair

Tishman also developed a tactic to keep the core and curtain-wall operations out of each other's hair. A “slider” crane, which cantilevers off the tower's sloping-in northwest corner, is used exclusively for concrete rebar and lumber. The slider and its mast travel up just above the curtain wall.

These strategies facilitate the erection of two floors every two weeks. The pace is needed to keep the steel frame, currently at 960 ft, on course for topping out in March at 1,386 ft.

Tishman, which reports no deaths or major injuries to date, is obsessed with worker safety. To protect crews, expected to peak at 1,500 this year, Tishman devised another first for a steel frame in New York City: A two- story, lightweight-steel traveling system, called a “cocoon,” wraps the upper limits of the frame in heavy netting and drapes nets down 16 to 20 floors. The cocoon, lifted by crane as the steel grows, contains work platforms that hang off the steel. Ironworkers no longer have to balance on beams.

The skyscraper sits in the northwest corner of one of the world's busiest and most congested construction sites: the 16-acre WTC replacement for the 10-million-sq-ft office complex destroyed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. The port authority's PATH rail tunnel crosses under the site. Construction gates have to be shared with seven major projects under way, complicating deliveries. Security is tight. Deliveries are screened.

Before construction began in 2006, Tishman spent months plotting operations, schedules and logistics to determine how to deliver a 1,368-ft office tower, topped by a 441-ft spire, on time, on budget and safely. “We micromanage to the max,” says Tishman's Ruffini. Any delay has a cascading effect on the rest of the operations coming up behind it, he adds.

At New York's New World Trade Center, Uncommon Cooperation

The $19-billion redevelopment of the original World Trade Center, destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, by terrorists, is loaded with memories of the tragedy. But for the thousands rebuilding the 16-acre site, the work also is loaded with patriotism, indomitable spirit and a collective will to succeed.

That's fortunate because, depending on who is counting, there are at least seven major projects currently under way, each with its own team and schedule but not its own site, at least not below grade. All the projects overlap in a four-level basement.

Consequently, the work is also loaded with challenges.

“To have the opportunity to work on this project is deeply emotional but also something we're proud of,” says Nicholas Holt, a director of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which is the architect for the site's iconic skyscraper, the up- and-coming 1,776-ft-tall One World Trade Center.

“We knew there would be lots of opinions and that it would be politically charged. But now that the building is visible, there is “a sense of optimism” in the air, he says.

That optimism is keeping others, still in the trenches, going. The most intense conditions are out of sight, in the warren of the basement that fills the site's expanded “bathtub,” formed by the site's 90-ft-deep perimeter walls. In the four-level structure, different projects share the same mechanical spaces, both horizontally and vertically. In effect, one team's ceiling is another's floor.

“We build to one point, and the next stakeholder builds to another,” says David Worsley, senior vice president for Silverstein Properties, the developer of 2 WTC, 3 WTC and 4 WTC, which together represent a $7-billion investment.

“The idea was to disburse all the facilities through the site to make it extremely difficult to knock out the services,” says Gary J. Negrycz, a vice president of the local Turner Construction Co., which is building the 88-story 2 WTC.

Things are even more complicated because of the recession. Two WTC's basement is home to the power supply for all three Silverstein towers. However, because of the economy, Silverstein is building only the basement at this time.

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey—the landowner investing $11-billion in the project—is responsible for the entire site. This work includes the agency's own projects: the $3.4-billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the $3.2-billion 1 WTC, the WTC Vehicle Screening Center and the shared WTC infrastructure and utilities, among them. The port authority is also keeping tabs on Silverstein's buildings.

Complicating matters further, there is a major effort in the immediate area to improve streets and transit services, centered on the $1.4-billion Fulton Street Transit Center.

The hub and the office buildings flank the complex's heart and soul: the $700-million National September 11th Memorial and Museum. The local Lend Lease is building the memorial and museum. Currently, all other project teams are standing aside so that 80% of the eight-acre memorial will be able to open on Sept. 11.

Low on Gas Taxes, Florida Accelerates Contractor Financing

Despite uncertainty over future funding, the Florida Dept. of Transportation is banking on low bids and private-sector financing as it accelerates an estimated $1.2 billion in projects in an effort to boost the state's stagnant jobs situation. At the same time, the agency is rolling out a plan to aggressively expand the use of tolls to add capacity throughout the state’s network of interstate highways and major bridges.

Calling the stream of revenue derived from gas taxes “not sustainable,” Florida Secretary of Transportation Ananth Prasad announced the plan before a gathering of the Florida Transportation Builders’ Association in Naples, noting, “We must identify creative financing alternatives to get more projects through the production pipeline.”

The first of those alternatives to be put to use will be contractor-obtained financing. An estimated $1.2 billion in projects are part of the acceleration, with 11 projects totaling about $900 million dependent upon contractor financing.

Secretary Prasad says recent contractor bids have been coming in at about 25% below DOT estimates. He expects the bids for the accelerated projects to be similarly priced, making the financing costs acceptable.

 

The model for this approach is the $394.4-million Interstate 4/Selmon Expressway Connector in Tampa. On that ongoing project, joint-venture partners PCL Civil Constructors and Archer Western Contractors provided $180 million in gap financing to help get the contract rolling.

The pool of contractors able to deliver financing for these projects is a concern and was taken into consideration in crafting the initiative, Prasad said.

“We’re going to make sure the size of these jobs is such that the vast majority of the contractors are going to be able to participate,” he said.

The group of accelerated contracts that will use contractor financing varies significantly, ranging in size from a $13-million U.S. 27 project in Polk County to the $172-million expansion of the Veterans Expressway in Hillsborough County, a part of Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise. Another roughly $300 million in projects not yet identified by FDOT also will be accelerated but will not use private financing.

BURLESON

Bob Burleson, president of the FTBA, Tallahassee, said his group applauds the measure  but is concerned about the ability of some contractors to compete for the jobs.

“The association recognizes the need to try to come up with some sources of capital that are available to more than just the megacompanies,” Burleson said. To that end, FTBA is attempting to line up investors in an effort to “open up a lot more [firms] for the opportunity to bid the work. I think we’ll be able to do that.”

There should be no shortage of investor interest, says Michael Likosky, a senior fellow at the New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge and author of "Obama's Book: Financing a Durable New Deal." 

“There’s an enormous amount of money sitting in funds right now,” Likosky says. Pension, private-equity and other types of funds, he says, “have money, and they want to put it in these projects rather than in, for instance, U.S. Treasuries right now, as long as they think they’re going to get a revenue stream. That’s very appealing to them.”

The timing of repayment will be negotiated on a contract-by-contract basis, says Dick Kane, agency spokesman.