It's all Academic

New chemistry building posed host of challenges

It took J.P. Cullen & Sons an awareness of its surroundings, a little help from a neighbor and a whole lot of ingenuity to complete the University of Wisconsin-Madison's new chemistry building.

Work on the new seminar hall and seven-story addition to the chemistry tower took place on a site pinched by heavy traffic on Charter and Johnson streets in Madison. There was a minimal staging area with work occurring within 15 feet of the property line and traffic on two sides.

To meet the challenge, Cullen turned to the nearby United Methodist Church to accommodate material and equipment overflow. Despite the tight site, Tom Pertzborn, Cullen's project manager, said the construction team treated the job just like any other.

"The site was typical of downtown construction," he said.

Working in such a constricted area required a high level of communication and sequenced installation of materials. Everything from crane use to material-delivery times was carefully scheduled to ensure adequate space for safe work conditions.

Project scheduling and coordination were even more complex tasks because -- considering that the tower houses 40 research labs and 128 fume hoods -- mechanical and electrical contractors had an extensive amount of work to do on each floor.

Close quarters

The tight space wasn't just evident on the ground. Workers who installed the 156-foot, precast, clad-concrete shear wall on the Johnston Street side of the site required elaborate scaffolding within the small available space. That wall juts out 17 feet over the entrance to the building.

The shear wall makes the new tower appear thinner, and the building is taller than the surrounding structures.

"This allows the exhaust from the chemistry building to release over the surrounding buildings," said David Black, project architect.

Cullen also faced a tight spot when erecting a wall of the new tower that had to be built 2 inches from the wall of an existing tower.

In order to accomplish the feat, Cullen created a one-sided form system to pour concrete for the wall. A crane slid the form up over the wall when it was completed.

"It takes a bit of ingenuity on the field supervisor's and foreman's part," Pertzborn said.

Pertzborn said the process included a learning curve, but by the time they were to the top of the wall, they had the system figured out.

Better conditions

The completed, 184,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art building provides new graduate research labs and support space, an instrument center and imaging facilities.

The new tower also facilitates synthetic-chemical research labs, which were moved to the new building because of its 16-foot span from floor to floor. The hazardous materials handled in these labs needed more air circulation than the 12-foot dimensions in the older tower.

The new labs create a different setting for researchers than in the old building. Researchers are in an observatory space separate from the lab, and a glass-wall partition allows them to view experiments from a safe distance.

"It's a relatively new approach to research labs," Black said.

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