Brighton Gardens Assisted Living Center

Location : Las Vegas, NV
Architect : Dennis Ray Boggio Architects, Englewood, CO
Engineer : S.A. Miro, Denver, CO
Truss And Roofing Installer : Metal Tech, Colorado City, AZ
Project Description : New Assisted Living Center
 
Elder Care Facility Combines Residential Look with Commercial Quality
       Brighton Gardens assisted living centers are a division of Marriott Senior Living Services. Marriott advertises their Brighton Gardens properties as "tasteful apartment-style assisted living", and the proportions and scale of the Las Vegas center certainly confirms their advertisements.
       The use of TrusSteel cold-formed steel trusses allowed the design of a residential roof line to maintain the scale and vernacular that conveys images of "home". And, of course, the CFS trusses created a non-combustible framing system with a long life-cycle and virtually no maintenance, worthy of the best commercial structures.
       The GC and installer stated that they liked the TrusSteel system and plan to use it for additional Brighton Garden locations.

Friendship Village Assisted Living Center

Location : Bloomington, MN
Architect : AG Architects, Wauwatosa, WI
Engineer : Meyer Borgman & Johnson, Minneapolis, MN
General Contractor : Krause Anderson, Minneapolis, MN
Truss And Roofing Installer : Custom Drywall, St. Paul, MN
Special Engineering : Alpine Structural Consultants
Project Description : New Assisted Living Complex
Area Under TrusSteel : 17,000 SF
 
Alpine Structural Consultants: The Team Rises to the Challenge
       Alpine Structural Consultants is often challenged to solve an engineering problem quickly as well as effectively. That certainly was the case when Triton Truss, Inc. called about Friendship Village, a life-care retirement community located in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
       Gordy Vipond, vice president of sales and marketing for Triton, explains:
"When a phase of the project was put out to bid through Krause Anderson, the General Contractor, we pointed out that there were at least two and possibly four locations where the trusses shown in the bid documents would fail. However, it was decided at the time to award the contracts and deal with the problem during the submittal phase of the project, not an uncommon decision in some projects. In other words, the problem was put on the back burner."
       But the problem couldn't be ignored forever. By the time the other trusses were approved and in production, the owner was concerned that the problem trusses as shown in the bid documents might cause a costly delay in the opening of the facility.
       That's when Triton Truss and its customer, Custom Drywall, suggested to the engineer of record, Meyer, Borgman & Johnson, that Alpine Structural Consultants could design the heavy girders that would be needed. The engineering firm agreed to let ASC take over at that point because a quick solution was essential to avoid costly damages.
        To accelerate the process, I was given the latitude, along with Jaco Brand of Alpine's TrusSteel Division, to deal directly with all the players on the project, including AG Architects, of Wauwatosa, WI, the engineer of record, the general contractor and the subcontractor. Jaco had designed the layouts and all the other TrusSteel trusses for the project and knew that the 36-foot long girders would have to carry approximately 3,000 pound loads at every two feet on center. Since time was such a crucial factor, Custom Drywall asked that the girders be designed with C-studs, which were readily available to them. They didn't want tube steel or any other material used because it would require a longer lead time to get the trusses fabricated.
       The solution was to design each of the four different girders using 12 gauge C-studs, 12 inches deep for the top chords, eight inches deep for the webs, and either 10 or 12-inch deep bottom chords. Additional reinforcements had to be added at some locations on the trusses to satisfy the design.  Norris Breivik, P. E., of the TrusSteel Division, also worked on the designs and TrusSteel's Oran Thornton and Keth Fletcher of ASC drafted them.
       Triton's Gordy Vipond sums up the effort: "The Alpine Structural Consultants team did an outstanding job collecting all the required information from the many sources. They went out of their way to please our customer and the demanding needs of the General Contractor. The girders have been supplied and the project is back on schedule. Alpine Structural Consultants was a key ingredient in making this a successful project."

The Gardens of Barrington Retirement Community

Location : Barrington, IL
Architect : Torti Gallas & Partners, Silver Sprints, MD
General Contractor : Pepper Construction Co., Chicago, IL
Project Description : Retirement Community
Area Under TrusSteel : 150,000 SF
 
TrusSteel Tops 150,000 SF Retirement Community
       The Garlands is a "New Age" luxury assisted living retirement community that sprawls over a thirty-one acre site about 40 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. When the doors are opened in early 2003, the installed TrusSteel roof system will cover more than 150,000 square feet of the buildings' footprints.
       The design team at Pinnacle Truss and Panel, Romeoville, Illinois, worked for an intense three months to complete structural design of the truss systems for the complex French Country architectural style project. Specifications for the project called for a UL fire-rated roofing assembly. The fact that TrusSteel has several UL listed ratings was a great help to Pinnacle. "The architect insisted on a UL-listed roof system and TrusSteel assembly P526 got us the job," said Bob Gifford, General Manager of Pinnacle.
       The installed system for the project is actually two separate truss systems installed on top of each other. The perimeter of the structure is framed with "red iron" beams on columns, and there is a column grid throughout the building. Multiple-ply TruSteel four-inch chord trusses were used to create a girder grid on the column grid, and these girder trusses supported pitched roof trusses. In many areas, after this "lower" truss system was installed and decked, a mansard truss system was installed on top.
       There are more than 2,000 individual truss designs on the project, including hundreds of mansard trusses, all of which were two-piece trusses. Gable ends were completed with a mixture of TrusSteel gable trusses, "C" stud framing and masonry.
       Pinnacle truss designer, Bryan Sirota, worked closely with Bob Keim and Rob Ellis in Alpine's Earth City office to keep the flow of designs coordinated, especially the resubmittals. Alpine also custom-designed the many unusual connections on the project, some with very high loads. "They turned everything around in a timely manner," Sirota said. "It's the most complicated truss system I've ever seen," said Gifford. "That's why it was critical that we teamed up with an exceptional installation contractor.
       International Decorators of Barrington was a natural choice because they are one of the premier installation contractors in the area. And they preferred TrusSteel over other CFS truss systems because of the inherent rigidity and the resulting ease of installation." Since the project was 100 percent "design-build", it allowed the Pinnacle design team to rise above the competition. The unique properties of the TrusSteel chord section enabled them to use innovative design methods and layouts for the unusually intricate truss system.

West Valley Medical Center

Location: Goodyear, AZ
       Because of their exceptional stiffness and high strength-to-weight ratio, TrusSteel trusses are easily "rafted" or assembled on the ground into roof sections and lifted onto the top plate.  Many contractors save time and money by installing HVAC, plumbing and fire protection systems in sections on the ground.
      Want more information on rafting? Click here.