Gate determined where the gravity-load embeds needed to be on the building, looking for common areas to be repetitive in the layout, Wolfe says.

“There ended up being a zone consistent on every floor,” Wolfe says. “They worked with the structural-steel fabricator to make sure of the proper locations, and it went together well.”

Some of the less complicated panels for the upper portions of the building were designed and produced first and then delivered to the site to wait for installation.

Gate labeled each individual module on the fabrication panel ticket. Company engineers provided a panel number on each corner. A few panels cracked in shipping or during installation and had to be recast, but that did not delay the project, Wolfe says.

Balfour Beatty designated a staging area large enough to contain up to five trailers close to the tower crane so that erection could be as efficient as possible.

installation

Exactly one year after the April 2010 groundbreaking, installation began at the lower portion and worked up the building.

On the tower, the panels wrap a 90-degree corner and extend 4 ft onto the next side of the building to avoid vertical joints and reinforce the notion of a solid cube.

The first couple of corners presented some issues, trying to keep the panel in plane without affecting the diagonal joint, Wolfe says. But, he adds, “Once figured out, it went really well.”