Rising 33 stories in downtown Pittsburgh, The Tower at PNC Plaza is an 800,000sf corporate headquarters that aspires to be the world’s greenest office tower. Opening fall 2015, the tower incorporates groundbreaking design and technology to exceed USGBC’s LEED Platinum criteria, and is committed to three goals: build community, serve as an example of workplace innovation, and aggressively minimize the use of resources and energy.
The project team utilized a TEKLA model to detail, review, and coordinate over 8,000 tons of structural steel. To expedite the schedule, the team provided a 3D Steel Fabrication mill order model to the contractors for bidding that allowed for a higher degree of accuracy in steel estimates and gave the client a quicker and more competitive bidding process. This 3D model helped to eliminate duplicative modeling and allowed the steel contractor to begin detailing steel earlier, saving time.
Unprecedented for a building of this size and type, the 3D fabrication model with connections was used by the team to review steel shop drawings virtually instead of thousands of 2D PDF paper files. This approach saved significant time in the review process and was more sustainable.
The general contractor utilized the final Tekla model to assist in a more accurate and rigorous BIM coordination with MEP systems that helped solve coordination issues in the office instead of the field, saving significant time.
