Balfour Beatty benefits from prefab panels on Virginia apartment project

Dive Short:

• LCOR Inc. has awarded Balfour Beatty a $79 million contract to build Sage at National Landing in Arlington, Virginia. Construction has commenced on the luxurious multifamily group predicted to spark added growth and vibrancy in the Crystal Metropolis district just exterior of Washington, D.C.
• The Balfour Beatty workforce is employing the most current technologies and lean design methodologies in setting up the condominium setting up. These will include things like the prefabrication of exterior wall panels and mechanical, electrical and plumbing parts, as effectively as the use of BIM, to assure productive delivery of the job.
• The utilization of prefabrication ought to preserve the Balfour Beatty groups installation time. It will also provide a safer set up system, lower jobsite squander and free of charge up supplemental area for other trades on the floors inside the making, in accordance to the organization.

Dive Perception:

The decision to use prefabricated exterior wall panels and MEP factors in setting up the 19-tale making was based mostly on lots of components, stated Sean Graham, vice president of functions in the Mid-Atlantic for Balfour Beatty.

“At their main, lean procedures, like prefabrication, are rooted in enhancing people’s functioning environments, activities, effectiveness, safety and time savings,” Graham instructed Construction Dive. 

For instance, prefabrication of the exterior wall panels minimizes the quantity of time that crews invest on working from swing levels and/or lifts to put in the exterior sheathing and air barrier elements. 

“In its place, the exterior sheathing and air barrier materials occur pre-installed on every panel from the manufacturing facility,” he reported. “The prefabrication tactic not only will save our venture groups time throughout set up, but it also gets rid of squander from the jobsite, offers a safer tactic to set up and saves space on the flooring for encompassing trades.”

Introducing still larger time savings and effectiveness is the point the panels would not have to journey considerably to be installed on the construction. They are domestically fabricated in Fairfax, Virginia, approximately 15 miles from the jobsite, he stated.

Job timeline

The building’s exterior façade was built with an aluminum composite metallic panel rainscreen, Graham mentioned. Measurements are demanded to prefabricate the building’s exterior stud wall panels, presenting users of the Balfour Beatty undertaking group an possibility to use these recognised measurements from the stud wall panel drawings to fabricate the metal panel rainscreen cladding. That cladding is mounted on the prefabricated stud wall panels.

“In addition, the repetitiveness of the project’s windows and window wall system, which the prefabricated stud wall panels are designed to assist, would make prefabricating the exterior partitions a cost-powerful, successful, safe and sound and responsible assistance wall for the project’s window units,” Graham stated.

Situated shut to Amazon’s HQ2 project, Sage at Countrywide Landing will be designed on the 40,000-sq.-foot web site of a former Verizon telecommunications creating. It is Balfour Beatty’s second undertaking with LCOR subsequent the company’s latest completion of LEED-Gold, 20-tale multifamily and combined-use advancement The Altaire. Designed by Bethesda, Maryland, firm SK+1 Architects, Sage at Nationwide Landing is slated for completion in the very first quarter of 2023.