Office

Major renovation and retrofit of the former Department of Transportation headquarters into a Class “A”, LEED Gold office building that exceeds GSA’s current Federal Office Building Standards and meets ISC Security Design Criteria.  Access to the subway is provided through the L’Enfant Plaza station, at D Street, SW.  The existing building was gutted down to its structure, which was salvaged and completely renovated to include replacement of the building façade and reconstruction of all service cores.

Amenity spaces were designed with a basic 30-ft. column grid to align with existing column spacing, with long-span designs considered for future tenant options.  Enhanced physical security measures exceed ISC Level IV, and include progressive collapse mitigation and blast-resistant building envelope, anti-ram barriers along the building perimeter, blast-resistant loading facilities, and common security checkpoints.

The modernized building boasts sweeping views of the city, a fitness facility, 400-seat cafeteria, and a major conference center.  The facility received Mid-Atlantic Construction’s 2010 Project of the Year Award in Renovation/Restoration.

SK&A also provided structural steel inspection; weld testing using ultrasonics for welds of the column steel jackets during construction; laboratory testing of concrete cylinders, mortar and grout tests, sprayed fireproofing testing and engineering supervision.

A large mixed-use, residential, retail, and commercial development at the intersection of Wisconsin and Western Avenues in Chevy Chase, MD.  The project contains a 15-story, 433-unit residential tower (480,000 sf), a new community center, a full-size Whole Foods grocery store, a 10-story office building, a new Bloomingdale’s department store, and two separate street-level retail buildings—all underlain by three levels of underground parking for 1,800 cars.  The residential tower is of post-tensioned concrete with a glass and masonry exterior.

Wisconsin Place was developed through a partnership of three national developers.  The components of the project were subdivided by a complex system of horizontal and vertical phasing lines, requiring challenging coordination between the various development and design teams.  SK&A served as the Structural Engineer of Record for the entire development and provided all structural inspection and testing required in accordance with the Montgomery County Complex Structures Agreement.

SK&A has performed structural engineering services on numerous projects for Kaiser Permanente, including its 168,000 sf medical office headquarters in Silver Spring, a new medical office building in Manassas, VA, the Regional Laboratory facility in Rockville, and the Silver Spring Data Center 2.

• For the regional laboratory, an existing two-story medical office building was adapted for reuse as a laboratory facility.  The structure has concrete masonry unit (CMU) load-bearing walls supporting a steel bar joist and steel-framed roof and floor deck.  Sections of the 2nd floor and roof were strengthened to increase their load carrying capability, to suit laboratory and library usage, and to handle new roof-mounted equipment.  The project also included a new building addition at its northwest corner, and several new in-fill elevated floor areas.  The existing first floor of the building was demolished and lowered in its entirety to accommodate access flooring.  Existing masonry walls were structurally modified, and new openings incorporated into the walls.
• In addition, since 1994, SK&A’s Repair and Restoration Division has provided engineering services on over 50 Kaiser projects including garage repair, expansion joint replacement, load evaluation, supplemental equipment support framing designs, façade repair, and general structural condition assessments.  SK&A also provided design and field inspection of a rooftop transfer girder installation, facilitating the removal of a ground level column in a conference room at the East Jefferson facility.

From 1986 until today, SK&A has been the structural engineer-of-record for all of the new construction, alterations, and structural retrofit work that has been or is being built at the Children’s National Medical Center (CNMC) in Washington, DC.

Gross area of new floor design undertaken at CNMC by SK&A, either constructed or under construction, consists of approximately 570,000 sf of hospital, laboratory, administrative, and support spaces (exclusive of service levels within the hospital), and 230,000 sf of structured parking.

The various expansions of the CNMC have generally been in the form of lateral tower additions to the main building, several vertical extensions of the main hospital tower at several stages, and construction of various support faculties, utility upgrades (including a full retrofit of electrical systems), new rooftop heliport, new laboratory spaces, a new MRI unit on the second floor, and a new medical office building.

Selected as one of the most sustainable buildings in the world in the book, "The World's Greenest Buildings: Promise Versus Performance in Sustainable Design," the second office building at Tower Oaks, developed by the Tower Companies and Lerner Enterprises as their corporate headquarters, is a nine-story, Class "A" office building (200,000 sf) with four levels of below-grade parking for 550 cars (242,000 sf).

Located off of I-270, the building integrates “Vedic” architecture, which is based on specific design principles that promote the health of its occupants and enhance the building’s performance.  Building amenities include a light-filled lobby, state-of-the-art fitness center, and a sustainable 43,000 sf landscaped/hardscaped plaza with a garden terrace and serenity pools.

The project has earned numerous awards and has the distinction of being designated the first LEED Platinum building in the Washington Metropolitan region.  SK&A also performed tenant build-out services for several other corporate office spaces within the building.

A very successful, open town center-style, mixed-use development on eight acres with residences, retail spaces, and multiple parking areas located on Sunrise Valley Drive in Herndon, VA.  Building #1 (355,000 sf) is a ground-level Harris Teeter grocery store with two levels of parking above and one level below the store.

Buildings #2 (13,200 sf) and #3 (34,600 sf) are two-story retail buildings.  Building #4 has 14,700 sf of ground floor retail with three levels of stick building residential above (50,000 sf).  Buildings 5A and 5B are both residential wood-framed residential buildings totaling 168,000 sf.

A new five-story administration building on the main campus of George Mason University.  The building is a long-span, steel-framed structure housing ground floor classrooms and retail establishments, as well as office and support functions on the upper four levels.  The building’s design incorporates an inverted pyramid layout, supporting a sloping front facade that provides additional floor space with each successive floor.

Developed by the George Mason University Foundation, the project’s design and construction were subject to Virginia’s Bureau of Capital Outlay Management’s (BCOM) review process and standards.

Pedestrian bridge connecting the Towers Crescent Plaza and the top level of the Tysons Corner Mall’s Parking Terrace C.  The bridge’s span totals over 200 ft with three concrete piers resting on caisson foundations that support X-braced steel trusses.

The project won the Merit Award in the Transportation/Bridge Project category of the 2011 SEA-MW Excellence in Structural Engineering competition.

This massive, mixed-use complex encompasses 5.9 million square feet of commercial, residential, and retail construction in 10 high-rise buildings with structured parking for 12,000 cars. The privately-developed project accesses the Tysons Corner Metro-rail station via an elevated pedestrian bridge. Specific buildings within the development’s larger master plan include:

• Tysons II Office Building F, PricewaterhouseCoopers Offices: Located at 1800 Tysons Boulevard, this world-class 320,000 sf, 15-story office tower was awarded the NAIOP 2005 Award of Merit for Best High-Rise Building.  The tower is dramatically elevated on five foot deep cantilever girders, supported on stainless steel bearings atop elongated columns.  Other dramatic structural features include a 36-foot long cantilevered restaurant that "floats" above the landscaped courtyard below, as well as folded concrete plate features at the roof and lower canopy levels.  A separate 275,000 sf, nine-story pre-cast concrete parking structure for 840 cars connects to Building E’s existing parking structure via elevated bridges.
• Tysons II Office Building H: The latest installation for the Corporate Office Centre is a 17-story, 476,000 sf office building eaturing a two-story, light-filled lobby and retail center with an iconic staircase and dramatic water feature, as well as other amenities, such as a conference center, fitness center, and café. The building’s 15 floors of office space sit above the two-story glass-enclosed lobby and retail center.  The third floor, directly above the podium, is cut back to the inner column line creating a strong reveal in the building’s form and providing a large external terrace for tenants.  The scheme also incorporates a pre-cast concrete garage on 11-levels for 1,185 cars as well as a 450-foot long enclosed pedestrian sky bridge that skewers through the building lobby and connects an existing parking garage across Tysons Boulevard to the new parking structure.

A mixed-use development, the project entailed the restoration of the existing 1920s era Tivoli Theatre in Columbia Heights for use as retail space on the ground floor, office space, and a new, 250-seat, live theater on the second floor.  The project’s scope also featured a new post-tensioned concrete building adjacent to the Tivoli Theater, housing a full-sized Giant Food grocery store and an additional two-story, steel-framed retail and office building with parking, flanking the Tivoli’s northside.

Renovations of the Italian Renaissance Revival-styled theater included a building structure evaluation, preparation of drawings and repair documents, and the performance of quality assurance inspections.  The load-bearing brick masonry had been severely worn and deteriorated and the building structure was undergoing severe corrosion of embedded structural steel elements resulting from water intrusion through cracks in the brick masonry, an open skylight, and failed roofing membrane.  In several areas, the level of corrosion reached the point of complete disintegration of structural steel members.  The structural instability that resulted created a life safety hazard and threatened the structural integrity of the building.

Extensive analysis of the load-carrying capacity of various structural elements led to a successful repair design.  The theater was restored to structurally-sound condition without compromising the building’s historical integrity.