OWNER & DEVELOPER: UBS Warburg, Stamford, Conn.
ARCHITECT: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, NYC
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, NYC
MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL & PLUMBING ENGINEER: Cosentini Associates, NYC
GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEER: Langan Engineering & Environmental Services, Elmwood Park, NJ
TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT: Walsh-Lowe & Associates Inc., Stamford, Conn.
DRYWALL CONTRACTOR: A&A Drywall & Acoustics Inc., Milford, Conn.
ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR: Belway Electrical Contracting, Elmsford, NY
STRUCTURAL STEEL CONTRACTOR: Cives Steel, Gouverneur, NY
MECHANICAL CONTRACTOR: Harry Grodsky & Co. Inc., Springfield, Mass.
SCAFFOLDING & HOISTING CONTRACTOR: Regional Scaffolding & Hoisting Co. Inc., Bronx, NY
FOUNDATION & CONCRETE SUPERSTRUCTURE CONTRACTOR: Tri-Star Building Corp., Pleasantville, NY
CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: Turner Construction Co., NYC

The $100 million UBS Warburg, Phase IIA: Trading Floor Expansion Project was faced with as many challenges as a corporate takeover.

Project challenges included a 23-month schedule, working in an occupied facility, seamless tie-in work, water prevention, matching materials and zero downtime.

To resolve these issues, the project team created the world's largest trading floor - equal to the size of two football fields.

The trading floor is the upper level of a 338,000-sq.-ft. addition to an existing building. At the tie-in location, there was an operating trading floor, data center, offices and parking garage. Beam pockets for the steel connections at each floor and at the roof were cut into the building. The connecting shift crew proceeded through three months of nights and weekends with selective structural demolition and extensive welding to accept the new structural steel. Many of the connections wee directly over windows where trading floor desks were located. The building structure required a total of 54 connections to the existing building plus an additional 27 connections at the curved roof. Once the connections to the existing building were in place, the structural steel erection was quick.

The solution to keeping the trading floor operational - even when trading desks were literally 3-ft. away from the new construction, a temporary wall partition was constructed at each floor.

The interior of the trading floor was completed by fully scaffolding the trading floor ceiling with a hung platform. The platform was set in steps from the floor the curve of the ceiling. The open-ended walls were installed with conventional scaffolding. This coordinated system allowed the trading floor's double access floor system to be simultaneously installed with the ceiling.

In order to mange the project with a 23-month construction schedule, the project team developed an up front, logic-driven, critical path schedule to plan and monitor the pre-construction and construction processes. Maintaining the schedule also required significant preplanning to ensure that the bank's daily operations were not interrupted.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was working on an occupied facility. From blasting rock to steel erection, to pouring concrete through furniture installation, great care was taken to ensure the safety of all UBS employees by construction a 12-in. thick wall to separate them from the construction.

To seamlessly tie-in the new building to the existing one, lasers were used to align walls, floors and ceilings. The challenge of water prevention was met by taking great care in installing the waterproofing system.

To match materials with the existing structure, the architect produced an elaborate submittal process for naturally occurring materials such as wood and granite. The engineer was required to insure redundancy to avoid downtime - a mandate for keeping this type of business operational during construction.

The jury recognized this project's team for meeting the challenge of keeping the existing trading floor operational during construction and for performing the required work on a constrained site next to the existing structure.