MINNEAPOLIS, November 29, 2011 – Delivered to the job site in seven truckloads and assembled over two days, a 160-ton capacity crawler crane has just helped complete a key phase in the construction of Bennington High School’s new auditorium addition.
The crane put in place 62 massive precast concrete panels – up to 54 feet tall and as heavy as 58,000 pounds each – to form the auditorium’s exterior walls.
“It’s quite unusual to see a crane of this size used in building construction in this area,” said Wayne Stahl, president and chief executive officer of Stahl Construction, general contractor for the auditorium project. “But the weight and dimensions of the largest wall panels required it. Because of their size, they were twice as heavy as the precast most commonly used in buildings here.”
Ranging from 15 to 29 tons a piece, the 8-foot-wide panels were installed over the course of four weeks. They were supplied by Enterprise Precast of Omaha and installed along with structural steel framing by Davis Erection Co., the local company that owns and operated the crane.
Each panel required up to four hours to be hoisted from the delivery truck and set in place by the hydraulic lattice-boom crawler crane from its position in the middle of the auditorium footprint. Transportation of the crane between Davis Erection and Bennington required the closure of 168th Street for two days in late September for delivery and again recently after completion of the job.
The next phase of the project involves enclosing the 23,068-square-foot auditorium with a roof, doors and additional walls before the snow flies and then finishing the interior over the winter.
Construction of the $4.59 million addition began in April and will be completed next summer.
Nearly two dozen subcontractors from the Omaha area and Lincoln have been hired by Minneapolis-based Stahl Construction to work on the auditorium. They include iron workers, excavators, building materials suppliers, mechanical and electrical contractors, roofers, landscapers and numerous other local businesses.
The Bennington High School project is managed out of Stahl’s new branch in metropolitan Des Moines, opened last summer to serve the company’s clients in Iowa and Nebraska. Heading the new office is Madrid, Neb., native Bill Harger, an 18-year construction industry veteran and graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in construction management.
Stahl Construction is also at work on another project for Bennington Public Schools – building the new one-story 67,400-square-foot elementary school at Rainwood Road and Rosewater Parkway in the Heritage development. Work on that project began last April and will be finished for the 2012-2013 school year.
Stahl currently has nearly $93 million in construction projects under way in Iowa and Nebraska. In Iowa, the company’s projects include the new 47,000-sq-ft public works building for the city of Council Bluffs as well as renovation of Urbandale Middle School and construction of the new Ankeny Centennial High School and Fort Madison Middle School.
Construction workers help to position one of the massive precast concrete panels forming the exterior walls of Bennington High School’s new auditorium addition. |
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