Trammell Crow Completes Apartment Complex

Seattle - Ballard Apartments, LLC, an affiliate of the Pacific Northwest division of Trammell Crow Residential (TCR), announced it completed construction of the Leva on Market apartments in Seattle’s urban Ballard neighborhood.

GLY Construction Co., Bellevue, opened a separate concrete division in April. (Photo courtesy of GLY)

Leva includes 260 apartment homes in two access controlled buildings - one eight stories and the other six - over an access controlled subterranean garage.

Crane Victim Settles with Contractor, Engineer

Seattle - The general contractor and structural engineer involved in a November 2006 crane collapse in Bellevue, Wash., settled a civil lawsuit with the family of the man who died when the 210-ft tower crane's boom hit his apartment.

The toppled tower crane also damaged Plaza 305, an office building adjacent to the site. Details of the settlement, announced April 20 were not disclosed.

Matthew Ammon, a Microsoft attorney, lived across the street from the Tower 333 site, where the crane was in use. His parents, Kathleen Gaberson and Larry Ammon filed suit in King County Superior Court against Seattle-based firms Lease Crutcher Lewis (LCL), the general contractor, and Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), which designed the crane base for LCL. They argued the companies were negligent in the crane's design and construction. King County Superior Court Judge Michael Trickey had dismissed Northwest Tower Crane Services from the case, stating it was not responsible for any part of the collapse.

"There was no judgment against us but we contributed some of the money in the settlement," says Jon D. Magnusson, MKA's chairman and CEO.

In the state Dept. of Labor and Industries (L&I) investigation following the accident, LCL was fined $5,600 for failure to obtain measurements to ensure crane base deflection limits were not exceeded, says Bill Lewis, LCL chairman and CEO.

The department also issued a citation and notice, with a $5,600 fine, against MKA. MKA appealed the citation to the state Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals. On Feb. 11, Industrial Appeals Judge Lynn D.W. Hendrickson vacated the citation and notice against MKA "in its entirety", says the judge's decision.

Subsequently, the state attorney general's office filed a motion for reconsideration of the judge's ruling, says Magnusson. In early April, the three-member Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals voted unanimously to uphold the judge's ruling, he says.

As part of the civil suit, LCL brought action against MKA. The whole issue arose when the crane was first erected and it should have been immediately tied back to the core, but wasn't, says Magnusson, who maintains the L&I investigation missed the actual cause of the collapse. The crane base was designed assuming a tie-in to the building frame in the initial configuration and was built without one, he says. The reason for this is the subject of the dispute between LCL and MKA, he adds.

The collapse of the crane prompted the state legislature to enact new laws establishing a construction-crane-certification program and a crane-operator-certification program, which will be administered by L&I. L&I specifically asked that the new construction- crane legislation include a provision that, in any nonstandard tower crane base, an independent professional engineer must review and approve the plans.

PNNL Given Expansion Funds for Energy Studies

Richland - The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will be home to one of 46 new multi-milliondollar Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) announced last month by the Obama Administration.

The EFRCs, which will pursue advanced scientific research on energy, are being established by the DOE's Office of Science at universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and private firms across the nation.

The 46 EFRCs, to be funded at $2 to 5 million per year each for a planned initial five-year period, were selected from a pool of some 260 applications received in response to a solicitation issued by the DOE's Office of Science in 2008. Selection was based on a rigorous merit review process utilizing outside panels composed of scientific experts.

The DOE plans to award $22.5 million over five years for PNNL's new Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis, which will be led by PNNL chemist Morris Bullock. The Center comprises more than a dozen researchers from PNNL, the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wyoming. The Center is expected to receive $4.5 million in its first year.

ST Works to Fill Voids Caused by Tunneling

Seattle - Sound Transit and general contractor Obayashi Corp., Seattle, found seven deep voids recently, caused when a tunnel-boring machine hit pockets of sand on the Link Light Rail project in Seattle. Obayashi is the contractor in charge of drilling a twin tunnel for the Light Link Rail project, due to open July 18.

Operators noticed more soil being processed than they anticipated but attributed it to a measurement problem. When the sand pockets were removed, dirt above filled the void. One caused a hole at the surface, which was 21 ft deep in a residential yard. An Obayashi crew is filling the voids with controlled-density fill by drilling down to the void and pumping the fill into place.

“The other voids are 20 to 60 ft below the surface,” says Bruce Gray, Sound Transit spokesperson Shannon and Wilson, a Seattle geo-engineering firm, is investigating the possibility that other voids may occur, Gray says.

Engineers placed accelerometers around the area.“We have identified two other spots where we will be drilling to investigate possible voids. Our structural engineers will continue monitoring all of the buildings in the area where we've found the voids,” says Gray.

Cost of monitoring and repair is now at $1 million, Gray says. Who will cover the expense has not been determined. Obayashi and Sound Transit are currently negotiating other cost overruns on the project. “We could pay for it from our contingency fund or Obayashi could pay for it,” Gray says. “Right now we just want to concentrate on filling the voids.”

 Officials from Shannon and Wilson and Obayashi were not available for further comment. Sound Transit plans to bore a tunnel through similar soils for the next phase of the Link Light Rail. The Washington State Dept. of Transportation will likely face similar issues when constructing a tunnel beneath downtown Seattle to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct.