Lowe’s Design Center
Charlotte beat Dallas to become the home for Lowe’s global technology center. Construction on the 23-story building included an office, parking garage, and retail. Lithko’s scope involved slab on metal deck, the cast in place parking garage, slab on grade, and foundations on the adjacent precast garage.
The foundations demanded mass concrete placements due to their large dimensions. The center pile cap was 50 feet wide x 90 feet long x 7 feet thick. There were 150 auger cast, deep foundation piles, that required our team to dig and place rebar around all of this. We successfully completed this portion of the project in 3 weeks (1,300 cubic yards, 225 yards/hour with 2 pumps).
The next challenge was the main core, which started below the first-floor elevation, 15 feet in the ground. The first level of core was comprised of 35-foot-tall walls, including some shear, that ranged from 18” to 2’ thick. We utilized self-consolidating concrete due to the rebar congestion.
Once we started on the garage, although the work was standard, we had a very aggressive schedule. Each level was 23,000 square feet and our plan was to break down each floor into 3 placements (7KSF-8KSF). To meet the schedule, we poured every 3rd day while accommodating the city’s noise ordinance (no work before 7 am or after 9 pm) in this highly congested traffic area.
Lastly, our cast in place structure went up to level 9. However, structural steel began on level 7. This required our team to stop work for 2 weeks and then come back to install the rebar, close formwork, and pour concrete around the steel.
To ensure we kept up with all the details and avoided any snags in coordination and schedule, we enhanced our daily planning process. After our main huddle with the entire team at the trailer, our Field Leads took their crew to the specific work areas to plan in more detail for the day.
