The Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium’s North End Zone expansion includes 47 new luxury suites, a North End Zone Club and seating areas in the upper deck and lower bowl. The $144-million project has increased the stadium’s capacity to 100,000 seats.
The project team implemented a number of management and building innovations to ensure the home of the University of Texas Longhorns remains as popular and functional as it has since it opened in 1924.
All work in and around the existing stadium had to be perfrmed around football seasons. The schedule demand required the team to formulate shift work, overtime work and a work-around plan in order to proceed with construction.
Hensel Phelps established additional shift work schedules by working three shifts per day, seven days a week; worked overtime to reduce any delays; and performed work out of sequence to the project schedule in areas not on the critical path. That enabled crews to start work ahead of schedule and build staffing for critical areas.
Hensel Phelps developed and implemented creative construction jointing techniques in the concrete superstructure that allowed continuous construction while the facility remained operational. To build the cantilevered decks on levels nine and 10, formwork was designed to eliminate multifloor shoring and reshoring below so that the suites and club spaces on these levels could be constructed simultaneously with the superstructure.
In these spaces, 47 suites and a 50,000-sq-ft indoor club were built. Interior finish construction of each of these spaces was completed in only five months.
The general contractor also designed and utilized custom forming and shoring to construct the new North End Zone expansion tie-ins at the existing east and west grandstands. That protected and preserved the existing construction and maintained the existing main mechanical and electrical rooms, all while keeping the services 100% operational throughout construction.
Key Players
Submitted by: Hensel Phelps Construction Co.
Owner: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin
General contractor: Hensel Phelps Construction Co., Austin
Architect: Heery International Inc., Atlanta
MEP engineer: O’Connell Robertson, Austin
Fire protection engineer: Schirmer Engineering Corp., Richardson
Civil engineer: Jose | Guerra Inc., Austin
Structural engineer: Rogers Moore Engineers LLC, Houston
Audio-visual systems consultant: Datacom Design Group LLC, Austin
Landscape designer: Coleman & Associates, Austin
Waterproofing consultant: Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Irving
