Balfour Beatty benefits from prefab panels on Virginia apartment project

Dive Quick:

• LCOR Inc. has awarded Balfour Beatty a $79 million agreement to assemble Sage at National Landing in Arlington, Virginia. Construction has commenced on the luxurious multifamily local community expected to spark extra enhancement and vibrancy in the Crystal City district just outdoors of Washington, D.C.
• The Balfour Beatty workforce is employing the most recent systems and lean design methodologies in developing the condominium making. These will consist of the prefabrication of exterior wall panels and mechanical, electrical and plumbing parts, as very well as the use of BIM, to be certain efficient supply of the venture.
• The utilization of prefabrication should help save the Balfour Beatty groups installation time. It will also present a safer installation approach, lessen jobsite waste and cost-free up additional room for other trades on the floors within just the building, in accordance to the business.

Dive Perception:

The decision to use prefabricated exterior wall panels and MEP components in constructing the 19-story setting up was based mostly on a lot of variables, stated Sean Graham, vice president of operations in the Mid-Atlantic for Balfour Beatty.

“At their main, lean procedures, like prefabrication, are rooted in maximizing people’s doing the job environments, ordeals, efficiency, safety and time personal savings,” Graham explained to Construction Dive. 

For instance, prefabrication of the exterior wall panels minimizes the sum of time that crews devote on functioning from swing stages and/or lifts to set up the exterior sheathing and air barrier elements. 

“Rather, the exterior sheathing and air barrier elements come pre-installed on every panel from the manufacturing facility,” he stated. “The prefabrication tactic not only saves our venture groups time for the duration of installation, but it also eliminates squander from the jobsite, gives a safer tactic to set up and saves place on the floors for encompassing trades.”

Incorporating nonetheless better time discounts and efficiency is the reality the panels will never have to travel significantly to be installed on the framework. They are domestically fabricated in Fairfax, Virginia, approximately 15 miles from the jobsite, he stated.

Challenge timeline

The building’s exterior façade was intended with an aluminum composite metal panel rainscreen, Graham mentioned. Measurements are expected to prefabricate the building’s exterior stud wall panels, providing customers of the Balfour Beatty venture team an prospect to make the most of these recognised measurements from the stud wall panel drawings to fabricate the metallic panel rainscreen cladding. That cladding is put in on the prefabricated stud wall panels.

“In addition, the repetitiveness of the project’s windows and window wall program, which the prefabricated stud wall panels are made to help, tends to make prefabricating the exterior partitions a cost-effective, productive, safe and sound and trustworthy help wall for the project’s window methods,” Graham claimed.

Located near to Amazon’s HQ2 project, Sage at National Landing will be developed on the 40,000-sq.-foot web-site of a previous Verizon telecommunications setting up. It is Balfour Beatty’s 2nd project with LCOR following the firm’s recent completion of LEED-Gold, 20-story multifamily and mixed-use improvement The Altaire. Made by Bethesda, Maryland, firm SK+1 Architects, Sage at Nationwide Landing is slated for completion in the initially quarter of 2023.