New brothers

Iberville, Bienville buildings to complete Baton Rouge foursome

By Angelle Bergeron

Explorer brothers Iberville and Bienville opened the gateway from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River, and two government buildings bearing their names will soon grace the entry to Baton Rouge's new Capitol Park.

The buildings under construction look like brothers in many ways. Both are nine stories, mimic the art deco design of the Louisiana Capitol and feature exterior finishes of precast concrete panels, glass curtain walls, aluminum wall panels and third-floor roof terraces facing the Capitol.

The buildings will complete a foursome of structures (preceded by the LaSalle and Galvez buildings) in Capitol Park that face the Louisiana Capitol. All of the buildings are owned by the state and will house government agencies.

The Iberville building is scheduled for completion in April and the Bienville building in May.

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Ratcliff Construction Co. of Alexandria is working on the Bienville Building and Milton J. Womack of Baton Rouge is contractor for the adjacent Iberville Building.

The two contractors are working in tight spaces with limited laydown areas and fast-paced schedules, yet their projects differ in several ways.

The nine-story Iberville, which will house the Department of Social Services, is slightly larger than its counterpart and will boast a basement. Its design also features two shear walls at the core of the building, whereas the Bienville is structural steel and poured-in-place concrete.

Womack was scheduled to begin construction of the $28.4 million Iberville building in March 2004, but the contract was extended for 30 days because of >> demolition delays, said Stephan Dorsey, project manager.

Holly & Smith Architects of Hammond and consulting engineers McKee & DeVille of Baton Rouge designed the Iberville.

"By the time we moved in, the only thing that was here was the basement slab from the old building," Dorsey said. Womack cored the existing basement and drove about 70 precast concrete piles as foundation, then poured the foundation slab.

"After we poured the slab, we started pouring the shear wall," Dorsey added.

As a segment of the shear walls was complete, Womack erected steel, then the metal decking for the poured-in-place concrete slab floors.

Most of the concrete was poured at night, so the contractor was able to stage the work in the street and move out before disrupting the early morning traffic flow.

"Our supplier, Heck Concrete of Baton Rouge, told us they were experiencing some problems with the cement supply last summer, but they didn't slow us down any," Dorsey said. "We did have some steel price increases about a year ago. We went to the state to try to help us absorb the price increases, but it said it wasn't able to."

Fortunately, the subcontractor helped mitigate some of his costs with the steel mill.

The contractor is erecting the building in east and west halves, which was the only way it could perform the work on a site barely larger than the 270,000-sq.-ft. building's footprint.

"When we erected the west half, we used the footprint of the east half as a storage area," Dorsey said.

He added that the west half of the building is tied into both shear walls and, as the east half was constructed, it was tied into the existing portion.

"You plumb up one half and you hope the other half plumbs up just as good," he said.

The consulting engineer ordered surveys after completion of the third, sixth and ninth floors to make sure everything was within acceptable tolerances. "He wanted to check it periodically instead of waiting too long, but we didn't have any problem," Dorsey said.

Currently, the contractor has completed erection of most of the precast concrete and the roof, installed most of the windows and is about halfway down the building with interior drywall.

At the $30.5 million Bienville building site, demolition crews had left nothing behind but a few slabs and pile caps when Ratcliff mobilized for construction in April 2004.

"We had one big slab, about 3 ft. thick, that covered the old parking garage area," said Jeff Robichaux, superintendent. "We busted through the concrete, backfilled with dirt and then drove the pilings in those holes, 95 ft. into the ground."

More than 100 of the building's 302 pilings were driven in that one area, Robichaux said.

"That's something we knew we were going to have to do, but we did find a couple slabs that we didn't know were there," he added. "Some areas that were supposed to be removed by the demolition contractor weren't removed for some reason or another."

Architects for the Bienville building are Washer, Hill and Lipscomb Architects of Baton Rouge and Eskew, Dumez and Ripple of New Orleans. The 263,605-sq.-ft. building, which will house the Department of Health and Hospitals, is made of structural steel with reinforced concrete grade beams and concrete floors.

Storing the precast components posed a problem on a project where, like the Iberville, the footprint of the building almost completely filled the jobsite.

"One of the challenges is to get the materials onsite and store them when you need them, especially when the state's policy is not to pay for offsite materials,"

Robichaux said. "Our subcontractor, Arkansas Precast (of Jacksonville, Ark.), can't afford to build several million dollars of precast and not be paid for it, so it has to be made as we go."

The Bienville is supported by steel X-bracing that runs through the center of the building from bottom to top.

"We placed several thousand yards of concrete in the ground to support this structure," Robichaux said. "In the ground is a massive concrete weight that is 15 ft. tall and 9 ft. wide. There are probably 700 or 800 yds. of concrete in one big footing that the X-brace sits on."

Before pouring the concrete, Ratcliff excavated 15 to 20 ft. below finished floor grade.

"The hole was probably 70 by 70 ft. sq.," Robichaux said. "It was huge, but we had to have enough room to get the steel tied and the concrete poured."

The contractor poured several hundred yards of 4,000 psi concrete at a time.

"We probably put several thousand yards of concrete into the ground," Robichaux added.

Ratcliff is currently installing sheet rock and exterior window and panel systems. DHN Corp. of Memphis is manufacturing and installing all of the windows and metal panels. Joe Banks Drywall of Mangham is installing the sheetrock.

Lisa Smeltzer, project manager for the state, said coordination of the numerous subcontractors at the two state building sites has been important because there are so many of them.

But she added, "We're on schedule and I have no complaints." <<

Useful Source:

For a list of projects completed in downtown Baton Rouge since 1997, go to: http://brgov.com/dept/ddd/projects1987.htm