Turner Construction Co.

Architect:

AC Martin Partners, Inc.

Client:

Hanjin

Scope Of Work

At 73 stories, the Wilshire Grand Center is the latest addition to the Los Angeles skyline and the tallest building in America, west of the Mississippi river.

It features 900 luxury hotel rooms and 20 floors of rentable, Class-A offices; more than 45,000 square feet of restaurant and upscale retail space; a 70th-floor sky-lobby with a signature observation deck and pool with sweeping views; a variety of innovative public plazas and gathering spaces for visitors and locals alike; and below-ground parking for 1,250 cars.

In addition to the retail, restaurants, cultural and nightlife attractions that make the Wilshire Grand Center a destination in itself, it also offers visitors pedestrian-friendly access to a burgeoning downtown, as well as convenient connections to local and regional transit.

Click here to make a 3D print of the Wilshire Grand Center.

From foundation to spire, the Wilshire Grand Center sets records – and standards – for construction.

Concrete
The foundation for the Wilshire Grand Center set a Guinness World Record for the longest continuous concrete pour, running more than 20 hours.

Beginning at 5:00pm on February 15, 2014 and continuing throughout the night and next day, Turner conducted an elaborate symphony of 400 workers, eight batch plants, 19 concrete pumps, and 208 mixers to place more than 2,000 truckloads – or 21,600 cubic yards of concrete. The resulting mat foundation is 18 feet thick and weighs more than 82 million pounds.

Steel
The Wilshire Grand Center is features a hybrid technology which uses a combination of structural steel, reinforced concrete and what are known as Buckling Restraint Braces (BRB’s) to resist high lateral forces – such as those that act upon a high-rise building in an earthquake. The BRBs absorbs seismic forces and work with what are called belt trusses, which go around the building’s perimeter, to prevent both buckling and twisting under severe ground motion.

Prefabricated Modular Bathrooms
Built offsite, 700 prefabricated bathroom pods were trucked to the site six at a time, hoisted into place, and bolted down the same day. The process saved time, money and trips up and down the hoist with material. In addition to these savings, factory building conditions are safer and more controlled, which facilitates high-quality, consistent work, and is easier on the trade contractors doing the assembly.

Safety
The project team at the Wilshire Grand Center earned Golden Gate recognition from Cal/OSHA for their site safety program. The Golden Gate partnership recognition program supports and motivates teams that partner pro-actively with the Cal/OSHA Consultation Service on the development of their site-specific safety plans.

New Heights
The 73-story Wilshire Grand Center is the tallest building in the West, with its iconic curved roof and spire reaching 1,100 feet into the air.

Even as we recognize that a finished project is greater than the sum of its parts, as builders, we think the parts are pretty impressive. For example, the Wilshire Grand Center represents the work of more than 2,200 people over 257 weeks, who put in place more than 22,000 tons of steel, more than 55,000 cubic yards of concrete, and 500,000 square feet of glass. The result is a technologically sophisticated, sustainable tower.

For great local coverage of the project from start to finish check out the L.A. Times’ multi-part feature, here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wilshire-grand-updates-20170627-htmlstory.html