Shreveport's Allied Health Facility

Concrete building shored 100 percent during upper floor construction

By Martin Schwartz

Students of LSU's medical program will have two new facilities to aid in their training when the Allied Health Facility & Therapy Pool, currently under construction just south of the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, is completed early next year.

The $10 million, 76,000-sq.-ft. concrete and steel structure - actually two separate buildings - is being built by Walton Construction of Shreveport.

Though being built as a single-phase construction, the three-story concrete classroom facility has a head start on the structural steel therapy pool building, which is just beginning to come out of the ground. Project Manager Brett Bollman said the first building is nearly complete and the two buildings will eventually be connected.

Bollman said the new buildings would house classrooms for advanced students in LSU's medical program.

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"It's geared toward classrooms," he said. "It's not really a medical facility, but there will be some medical elements." Bollman said the university would own the state-funded buildings when the project is done.

By the time Walton Construction received its notice to proceed, the owner had already prepared the site.

"It was a pretty clear lot," Bollman added. "We had some utility lines that had to be relocated. They ran down the middle of the site. Other than that, it wasn't too bad."

The entire site got 6 ft. of fill before foundation work began. Bollman said the concrete building has just under 300 16-in.-diameter auger cast piles reaching approximately 50 to 60 ft. >> deep with concrete peer caps on a 6-in. structural slab.

The ground floor is made up of three architectural elements: precast concrete, brick veneer and glass.

"The precast is kind of white, almost a blasted look, whereas the brick is a darker color so it will contrast a bit," Bollman said. When completed, the building will match the architectural style of the rest of the campus.

Concrete for the two subsequent floors was pumped and placed during four- to six-hour pours in the early morning. Bollman said each slab was split into two parts, meaning each floor took about 12 hours to pour.

To add to the challenge, the structure was not designed to support the load of pouring the upper floors.

"Basically, we had to re-shore the thing 100 percent," Bollman said. "A lot of elevated structures are designed to support the load where we can pour two or three stories up. This one we had to shore 100 percent all of the way down because of the design load on the structural slab.

"We couldn't take any of the shoring out of the bottom floor while we were pouring the top floor."

When completed, the project will have consumed 4,700 yds. of 4,000 psi concrete supplied by TXI.

"The mix is a little stronger than something you might normally see," said Bollman. "There wasn't any differentiation between columns of slabs. It was all one mix, which made it kind of easy, actually. There was less chance for error."

Though all the pours came in the early morning hours, Bollman said there wasn't any sound of dissent from the project's residential neighbors.

"We did most of the work on the LSU side, so there probably wasn't a lot of noise for them here even though there are houses on the other side of the road," he added. "That actually worked out pretty well."

LSU Medical Center also cooperated with the requirements of the construction crew.

"We had to close off a couple of roads," Bollman said. "They bus in a lot of their parking and we closed off some of the roads and parking places to get the utilities in, but they worked with us well on that. LSU was considerate with us getting the job done and, likewise we were trying to be considerate with them getting their parking back."

Once completed, the exterior structure will be covered in either a brick veneer or EIFS, while the inside will be finished out with H-framing and gypsum.

Subcontractors on the project include: Fitzgerald Mechanical, Shreveport; McKenzie Electrical, Monroe; Marvin Weaver, drywall and EFIS, Shreveport; Patterson Concrete, who relocated to Shreveport from Mississippi before starting the job; and True Bond Masonry, Haughton.

Bollman estimates 30 to 40 employees currently are working the job, including subs.

Though originally planned as four 10-hour shifts per week, Bollman said inclement weather early in the project required some rescheduling. The project is being completed on a five-day workweek.