project of the month: desert steel erection speed-up · the contractual deadline for completed...

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Photo: SME Steel Contractors/Michael Moore

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Project of the Month: Desert Steel Erection Speed-Up08/13/2009

By Scott Lewis

Doubling up in Las Vegas usually means doubling the size of your bet. At the new terminal at McCarran InternationalAirport, the steel erector’s detailing subcontractors doubled the number of staff working on the project. That and othermeasures other measures paid off big.

Terminal 3 is expected to open in mid-2012 and will costapproximately $2.4 billion. It will span 1.9 million squarefeet, and include 14 gates and a multistory parkinggarage.

The Terminal’s frame, 300 ft wide and a half mile long,rose from the desert floor this summer. General contractorPerini Building Co., Framingham, Mass. is obligated toproject milestones in order to avoid financial penalties.According to Derek Bamberry, project manager with steelfabricator and erector SME Steel, “Perini wanted toaccelerate the steel erection and concrete work to gainsome time” on the project.

The contractual deadline for completed steel erection isOctober, 2009. To gain some breathing room on theoverall project, Perini laid out a five-month erectionschedule for SME, which is based in West Jordan, Utah,beginning in March and ending in August. Given the scaleof the project, that is “not a lot of time to fabricate thesteel, which involves over 200,000 shop drawings,” saysBamberry.

One of our biggest problems was getting drawingsapproved by all the project members. SME submitteddrawings to Perini. The chain of approval then ran fromowner’s representative Bechtel Infrastructure, to architectPGA and engineer Walter P. Moore and then back toBechtel for final review. All the approvals needed doubledthe typical approval time to 60 days.

“Because of the compressed schedule, our detailersdoubled the number of people they had on this project,with 60 to 70 detailers working at the peak,” Bamberrysaid.

The 17,000 steel components were fabricated in fiveshops. SME used their plants in Utah and Idaho, whiletheir fabrication partner, Hirschfeld Steel Group LP, SanAngelo, Texas, parcelled out its work to their three plantsin Texas. The plants delivered 15 to 20 truckloads of steel

each week to each of the four erection teams. Each fabricator worked with a separate detailer — SME used SteelSystems Engineering, Sherman Oaks, Calif., while Hirschfeld used Pro Draft Inc., Surrey, B.C.

By carefully insuring that elements were delivered according to erection sequence, the project team avoided storingsteel at the site until it was needed by each crane crew. Good logistics coordination, and having lots of room availablefor steel shakedown and handling, also contributed.

The slowdown that hit casino and commercial construction in Las Vegas worked to SME’s advantage as well. “Lots ofother projects in Las Vegas were put on hold,” says Bamberry “Seven or eight hundred local ironworkers were on theout of work list. At our peak we employed 165 ironworkers, with 120 our normal staffing for four crews.”

Ironworkers Local 433 organizer Darrell Fagg backed that up. “The work on CityCenter project was slowing down atthat time, so the Terminal 3 job came along at a perfect time.”

Erection topped out June 3rd, when the photos you see in the slide show were taken. Bamberry estimates that erectionwill be completed this month, well ahead of the October deadline. “We expect to beat our original internal schedule bysix weeks.”

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Desert Steel Erection Speed-Up

Project of the Month: McCarran Airport Terminal 3

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Las Vegas Airport Terminal 3 – 18,000 tons of structural steel.

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Four raising gangs hoisted more than 16,000 pieces of steel intoplace.

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Five beams being hoisted in mid-air.

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Architecturally exposed structural steel painted gray and white.

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Eighty truckloads of steel from five fabrication shops arrived on siteevery week.

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The project had the pick of Las Vegas’s best ironworkers.

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Safety standards for ironworkers were rigidly enforced.

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Topping out portrait of erection crew, members of Las VegasIronworkers Local 433.

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Rendering of completed terminal.

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project of the month: desert steel erection speed-up · the contractual deadline for completed...

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