Embassy Suites

This 230-room hotel is across from the Charlotte Convention Center. The $50 million project will include the hotel, ground floor restaurant and retail space.

Chabbra Construction chose to partner with Lithko to build this 11-story hotel in the heart of uptown Charlotte. Not only did the constructability (cast in place slabs with shoring heights varying from 9 feet to 50 feet tall, 50 feet tall columns, and 1-sided walls in basement) pose a challenge, but also because of its high traffic location, coordination and planning were required on a daily basis. During all concrete pours, pump trucks were required to be set up in the middle of the road, blocking traffic for hours at a time. Even though permits were issued for the concrete pours, some were postponed due to concerts and parades. Equally as challenging to maintain the aggressive project schedule desired by Chabbra Construction, the Lithko project team immediately focused on the vertical challenges associated with the large double 2 bank elevator/stair core shafts that consisted of 258 lf walls. In order to balance the sequence for the 11 levels of elevated slabs, Lithko collaborated with the client and the design team to re-engineer the slab to wall construction joint to take the shaft up ahead of the deck construction and get the large core off the critical path. This enabled a consistent workflow to hold the decks to a 7 day pour cycle and eliminated the potential for the project to bog down due to the intense vertical requirement on one end of the job. The team also greatly utilized the core principle of the 2-week look ahead schedule and constant communication with the client and the other trades using weekly coordination meetings.