What was it about?
Five-story building located just North of DFW airport. City requirements changed for non-combustible structures and required this building to be fully converted from wood to steel.
What did I do?
Worked with the design team (RSS Architects and Millet Engineering Group) to convert the project from wood to steel in all of its aspects, making sure that was energy code compliant.
What did I learn?
When changing the build spec from wood to steel one has to be very careful with the members’ sizes, since wood dimensions are nominal (2×6’s are in fact 1 1/2″ x 5 1/2″). If that is not observed thoroughly, several issues may come up downstream in the project impacting both time and cost.
One very specific thing I learned was that the bottom of the window openings for PTAC units needs to be at least 3″ tall to allow for the drain to be accessed once the unit is installed!
