Francis Tuttle Technology Center – Danforth Campus

Our Oklahoma City BURG started work on the new two-story, 155,000 square feet Danforth Campus in Edmond, Oklahoma, which will be home to the brand-new Entrepreneurship Academy.

The retaining wall for the two-story building is supporting the weight of the upper level structure.  The bracing design is a challenge due to the inability to install an adequately sized “dead man” (aka a slab thickening) to support the brace and the extensive sub-surface drainage system.  In order to function properly, our team installed the sub surface drainage pipe work at the bottom of our stone base elevation. If we poured a typical thickening in the slab, it would encroach on the sub-surface drain.

To add to the complexity, the building is shaped like the letter “C”, preventing our team from seeing the benefit of any forces from opposing sides of the building that are in a typical square shaped building. The original bracing design required a 6’ wide by 4’ deep thickening to support the lateral pressure imposed on the braces.  Through many discussions with the KFC engineering team, we drilled & epoxied dowels into the wall and added extra dowels in the spot footings to help carry the load.  This allowed us to reduce the size of the thickening, which is small enough to support the braces. Furthermore, this provided us adequate space to stay above the sub-surface drainage system.