Wrangling with D.C.'s Coordination Monster

摘要

The $833.9-million Washington Convention Center near-ing completion in the nation's capital could contain two Washington Monuments laid end to end. It could also hold six football fields or four Boeing 747 jetliners. The more than 2.3-million-sq-ft building, one of the 10 largest in the U.S., has 16 acres of roof. It contains more than 40,000 tons of steel in 250 trusses and columns. It has roughly 600,000 sq ft of facade, more than 8 acres of masonry walls, and enough piping to run around the Washington Mall 15 times. "Everything about the convention center is supersized," says Mark J. Tamaro, project manager for the local structural engineer of record, James Madison Cutts Consulting Structural Engineers Inc. Everything is supersized except the job's schedule. In a rush to get revenue flowing in, the Washington Convention Center Authority compressed the timetable from five to four years. Much like oil and water, supersizing and fast-tracking don't mix easily. "I've never had to juggle as many critical activities at the same time," says Ronald D. Strompf, a vice president of Clark Construction Group Inc., Bethesda, Md., and senior project superintendent for Clark/Smoot, the at-risk construction management joint venture of Clark and Sherman R. Smoot Corp., Falls Church, Va. Strompf, a 25-year Clark veteran, says the job caught him off-guard. "No one could have anticipated this in advance," he says.