Skanska USA tops out at Novartis campus expansion

Skanska USA and Novartis ceremoniously topped out the 550,000 s/f Novartis campus expansion project. To commemorate the topping out, Skanska's project team, Local 7 Iron Workers, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research executives, and local leaders, including mayor of Cambridge Henrietta Davis and Cambridge Fire Department captain Thomas Cahill, gathered at the construction site to lift and place the project's ceremonial topping out beam, marking the structural completion of the campus' two newbiomedical buildings. "This construction project will provide Novartis with additional state-of-the-art biomedical space to continue making the scientific discoveries we all depend on to keep our families healthy," said Paul Hewins, co-chief operating officer of Skanska USA Building's New England, Delaware and Pennsylvania regions. "Today's topping out brings us one step closer to completing a project that will add significant value to Cambridge, our nation's leading biotech cluster." Skanska is currently targeting LEED Gold certification for both biomedical buildings, which will becomprised of mixed-use laboratory, office and retail space. The buildings also include collaborative work areas, administrative space, an auditorium and dining facilities to house more than 1,000 Novartis employees. The buildings share a common underground structure that features more than 450 parking spaces, a loading dock, building support spaces and a central utilities' tri-generation plant. Skanska has removed more than 45,268 tons (90,536,000 pounds) of waste and debris, as well as 201,500 cubic yards of soil from the site. 99.7% of debris from the project has been recycled. Committed to the local community and the environment, the project team has worked to ensure maximum use and manufacture of local materials and products to reach today's topping out milestone. Skanska is on track to finish construction in 2015 as scheduled. The project team, which includes 1,500 trades people, has dedicated 632,784 work hours to the building's construction. During this time, Skanska's team installed more than 6 million pounds of steel as a temporary support of excavation, excavated and hauled 201,500 cubic yards of soil, placed more than 45,000 cubic yards of concrete, installed more than 7 million pounds of reinforcing steel and installed 36.5 miles of post tension cables in order to erect the campus's structural steel. The Novartis expansion project is the first construction project in New England to use Multi-TradePrefabrication, a method Skanska created to improve a project's overall efficiency, while also increasing collaboration among the designers, architects, engineers and subcontractors. In addition to the Novartis project, Skanska is currently using Multi-Trade Prefabrication to build B2, a 32-story residential tower in Brooklyn, N.Y., to expand the Nemours/Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Childrenin Wilmington, Delaware, and to complete University Medical Center in New Orleans.