Pre-Engineered Buildings

I. NRG Stadium - Houston, USA

  • The area surrounding the old Astrodome was a sea of hot Texas asphalt and the designers of the new NRG Stadium chose Grasspave2 to help with the "Greening of Reliant [NRG] Park."

  • The 7 acres of Grasspave2, the largest engineered grass-porous paving system in the world, is part of the 30 acres of green, park setting, at the site.

  • The Grasspave2 porous paving system, is considered a Best Management Practice by the EPA, for stormwater management. This Grasspave2 lot, with a 9 inch road base, has the ability to store and clean 60,000 cu. ft. of storm water, therefore preventing down stream flooding and non-point source pollution.

  • Normal concrete or asphalt parking lots produce automobile drippings, containing the toxic hydrocarbons, and the water flows into rivers and streams polluting the water.

II. AT&T Stadium - Arlington, USA

  • The Arlington skyline will be forever changed with its incredibly large white dome contrasting between our bright blue Texas sky and the city that supports it underneath. It looked blue-screened.

  • Two, 3,255-ton, 1,225-feet long steel arches raise 320-feet above the field anchored by 4 abutments. They are the longest single-span arches in the world.  

  • The stadium houses the largest retractable glass doors in the world at 180-feet wide by 120-feet tall. They take 18 minutes to open and close.  

  • Manhattan did all the cast-in-place work requiring 200,000 cubic yards of cast-in-place concrete and 22,000 tons of reinforced steel. 

  • Graig Olden, Inc. had to develop a new system to install the 8,000 soil nails to help complete the stadium’s foundation. 

  • Heldenfels Enterprises provided 3,000 pieces (or 30,000 tons) of reinforced concrete to help build the 1,800 seating risers and stairs.  

  • For the skin, glass fabricator Viracon made 5,071 glass panels weighing a total of 1 million pounds.

  • Childress Engineering Services provided design and layout help for the stadium’s skin, and glass, glazing, and curtain wall glazing systems comprising of 500,000 square feet of glass and composite aluminum panels.

  • The technology infrastructure at the stadium includes 250 miles of fiber-optic cable, 69 wiring closets, and 700 wireless access points.  

  • Four spread footer pads poured 60 feet below grade, with 40 feet showing help support the roof. 

III. Philippine Arena - Bocaue, Philippines

  • As long as Philippine is in strong ground motion area, structural members were mainly governed by seismic force. For this reason, it was very important to select proper seismic force resisting system from the beginning of the structural design

  • For seating plank, PC (pre-cast concrete) was applied for constructability and economic quantity of material.

  • Upper bowl [3, 4] is supported by 4-way inclined columns (Fig. 4). From the seismic resisting system categories on design code, SCBF (special concentrically braced frmae) and SMRF (special moment resisting frame)

  • To conclude, it was difficult to apply seismic resisting system categorized in design code. However, from the shape of structure itself, it is expected that it has enough stiffness to perform elastic behavior on seismic force

  • The roof size of Philippine Arena [5-7] is approximately 227 m × 179 m. Roof shape was drawn from the torus shape and span-rise ratios were 0.096 for major axis and 0.055 for minor axis (Fig. 5). Because the roof does not have enough rise height to expect arch action, deriving reasonable system for roof was quite challenging issue for structural engineer.

  • Spatial structures are divided into two groups: rigid structure and flexible structure. The flexible structure is lightweight which can control long span economically, but it has limitation in selection of finishing material selection.

  • Applicable space frame types were divided into two groups (Fig. 6): Radial type could distribute external force uniformly to the outer ring, and it had better shape resistance performance with multi-layered rings;

  • Grid type had lower efficiency of outer ring because external load was concentrated on partial areas only. However, Philippine Arena has ellipse shaped roof, radial type space fame could arise many problems such as increasing number of element and size of connection, and it required various shapes of secondary elements for cladding and internal ceilings.

IV. Target Field - Minneapolis, USA

  • Apart from the spatial constraints on the project, time also served as a possible stumbling block. In many cases decks were being poured well in advance of the final, fully dimensioned interior plans. Heavy design team involvement was required to identify provisions for further programming and design development. To ensure deck sleeving and latout was able to work real-time with the evolution of the design, new technologies and systems had to be developed.

  • Traditional methods of layout rely on using tape measures to triangulate locations from marked grid. This is a time consuming task that does not have a high degree of accuracy, especially with complex radial geometry. Using a robotic total station and dynamic tags created within the 3D model, the mechanical contractor was able place over 5,000 sleeves and openings with an extremely high degree of efficiency. This was especially important to ensure accurate layout while at the same time reducing the time and labor required.

  • A critical component of the project schedule was delivering the 3,000+ tons of structural steel on time. This meant that traditional shop drawing review methods, especially for many of the intricate connections would not be sufficient to maintain field progress. The result was a period of collocation by the design team, general contractor, and steel fabricator and detailers. The model created by the detailer was reviewed by the structural engineer where the accuracy of forces, connections, length and locations were discussed face to face. By using the model as the primary means for real-time coordination, the traditional RFI & 2D shop drawing review process became a formality. This allowed for significant efficiencies in the design, detail and review process.

V. Gillette Stadium - Foxborough, USA

  • Gillette Stadium is a 1.7 million-SF open-air structure with 68,000 total seats, including 80 luxury suites, 6,000 club seats and accommodations for an international soccer field. The unique design features a plaza in the north entrance portal to the stadium that is highlighted by an arched bridge and the stadium’s signature light tower, which pays homage to New England’s historic coastal lighthouses.

  • Over 40,000-SF of space is dedicated to Patriots training facilities. The A/V system includes a state-of-the-art sound system and two HDTV scoreboards/video boards. Skanska provided design-build services on this highly visible project'

  • The facility’s footprint fell on a large stone outcropping that our team ground up onsite. Much of the processed stone was used for the crane way and access ramp, then reused to create a frost-free zone beneath the cast-in-place seating sections, turning a construction obstacle into added value