Formwork for schools: three applications of advanced formwork that sped and simplified construction

Concrete Construction, Oct, 2004

Clark University

In Worcester, Mass., Consigli Construction built a parking structure extension for Clark University. With a nearly $3 million total cost, this project provides parking space for 263 cars. The existing garage was extended by about 72,000 square feet in five months.

Consigli decided to use the MevaDec slab formwork system in combination with Meva's MEP shoring system. This combination promised the fastest cycling and ganging and also the best concrete surface quality, a requirement of this project. First, the southern building portion was formed with some 9000 square feet of MevaDec that incorporates Alkus form panels, a plastic and aluminium composite.

Consigli chose the "drophead, panel method" of construction. The drophead allows the deck forms to be stripped without removing the shores. The contractor was able to cycle the panels after only two days--when the concrete reached a compressive strength of 3000 psi.

On this project there were integrated beams in the concrete decks. To support the areas with higher slab thicknesses, additional MEP gates were used to brace the post shores so they could be charged with higher loads. The drophead, panel method allowed Consigli to easily change the direction of the beam.

Three levels of ramps were also added with a slope of up to 5 degrees, requiring the entire deck forming system to be chained down to withstand the horizontal concrete loads. These ramps had to be formed and poured in two sections, so Consigli decided to add an additional 20,000 square feet to the already used 9000 square feet of MevaDec onsite.

--Alexander Winkler, MEVA

Worcester Trade School

The Worcester Trade School in Worcester, Mass., provides training for 22 vocational trades all at the same location. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts decided that a new building was in order to replace the current 100-year-old facility and is now completing the construction of a 390,000-square-foot building complex costing upwards of $90 million.

The new school is a joint venture between Consigli Construction of Milford, Mass., and O'Connor Construction of Canton, Mass. With five main wings surrounded by athletic fields and recreation areas, the structure has over 50,000 square feet of 10- to 20-inch-thick concrete walls 16 to 26 feet high.

The contractors chose MEVA's Imperial gang formwork system, supplied and engineered by Barker Steel Company. This European system offers panels sized in feet and inches, the largest being 12x8 feet with the plastic-aluminum composite Alkus panels, allowing a concrete pressure capacity of 2025 psf. Using 12x8-foot and 8x2-foot panels they were able to build gang sections as large as 16x26 feet, allowing the contractor to place 312 square feet of formwork at a time, greatly reducing labor costs. Some of the campus buildings and parking areas have radius walls more than 26 feet high. They were built using MEVA's adjustable circular formwork, Arcus.

--Alexander Winkler, MEVA

Milwaukee School of Engineering

How do you quickly and economically build a 100-foot-tall by 270-foot-long reinforced concrete shear-wall spine that splits a new sports/fitness complex down the middle? That was a question faced by Hunzinger Construction, Brookfield, Wis., in erecting the Milwaukee School of Engineering's 210,000-square-foot Kern Center, a $31 million structure begun in April 2003 and scheduled for completion in October 2004. Hunzinger elected to combine Symons Alisply clamp-form and Sky-Lift jump-forms to build the massive wall, which ranges in thickness from 24 to 18 inches and is complicated by numerous boxes, box-outs, embeds, reveals, sleeves, ledges, and pockets. Besides being the building's primary structural element, the spine carries a three-hour fire rating and a million-pound roof impact rating required by the International Building Code. Standing taller than the building's roofs, the spine allows extensive use of clerestory windows on the east and west halves of the structure and a 180-degree glazed ellipse at one corner. The Kern Center was designed by Uihlein-Wilson Architects, Milwaukee.

"The wood-faced steel clampforms were chosen for the shear wall--in fact for all of the building's concrete walls--primarily because gangs of these forms could be assembled and modified quickly," commented Will Wright, Hunzinger project superintendent. "For example, a typical 8.2x13.1-foot gang for the shear wall, including stiff-backs and hardware for lifting, took two men and a crane only about an hour to put together, about half the time of a comparable bolt-together aluminum or steel gang. Modifications to existing gangs were also twice as fast."

"Although the metric form's plywood is thinner than 3/4-inch HDO, the panels are rated for more than 1200 psf, essentially a full liquid head of ready-mix concrete at about 8 feet," Wright said. "We saw no form distortion on controlled pours up to 30 feet. No problems were noted with column pours either. Column forms often see the greatest distortion because the ready-mix concrete may not have time to partially set at the bottom to alleviate the pressure of subsequent pours."