SAINT LOUIS, MO – May 2, 2016 – In 2014, the President Obama Administration emphasized the importance of the work and workers housed in the Robert A. Young Federal Building (RAY FB) with the following statement, “It is critical for the General Services Administration (GSA) to fund the seismic renovations [of the Robert A. Young Federal Building] at this time to provide shelter [and] a safer exit from the building following a seismic event. Structural failure would not only cause catastrophic loss of life for those in and around the building, but it would impede the ability of first responders in the central business district [of the City of St. Louis] to carry out their mission in the event of disaster.”
The RAY FB demands the intensive study of solutions and analysis of the project to develop a best value approach that considers many factors including; safety, efficiency, tenant health and comfort, reliability and accuracy, as well as cost.
The General Contractor for this retrofit is McCarthy Building Companies in collaboration with the Design/Build team composed of Gensler, Etegra, Thornton Tomasetti and William Tao & Associates. As part of the Design Team, Etegra, Inc. will design any occupied space based on the intense collaboration between the client, the building users and the Design-Build Team with constant attention to the life safety and operational needs of the building occupants. The coordination efforts are made even more complicated by the variety of governmental agencies, departments and offices that occupy the RAY FB with their diverse missions, operational practices, daily schedules, security requirements, and number of personnel.
The design process and the construction approach required to place concrete shear walls and steel framed seismic dampening devices in the fully occupied RAY FB will require collaboration between GSA project management, representatives of the tenant agencies and Design-Build Team of architects, engineers and builders. The issues, challenges and effects discovered throughout the construction process will require the patience, imagination and determination of all project stakeholders to implement the project successfully.