2 Photo CreditJoseph Mills Photography3 Coreslab International is an industry leader in the manufacture of precast and prestressed concrete components. With eighteen plants across the United States and Canada, the company offers a wide range of related services, each location specializing in the services best suited to their particular markets. The company is a leader in innovation and structural design committed to providing its customers with the highest quality of service.Written by Ryan CartnerEstablished in 1990, Coreslab’s Oklahoma plant special-izes in commercial projects, offering both structural and architectural components for churches, schools, office buildings, parking garages, stadiums, storm shelters, and a wide range of other projects that make use of precast concrete. In August of 2015, Coreslab and a group of leading companies including multidisciplinary engineering firm CEC, precast design engineering firm Unintech, architect and design firm REES Associates, and construction management company Photo CreditJoseph Mills PhotographyPhoto CreditJoseph Mills Photography34 Manhattan Construction, were brought on board to build a new broadcasting facility for Oklahoma’s KFOR Channel 4 News station. The building was designed to withstand an EF3 tornado with wind speeds of up to 165 miles per hour. “The main purpose of this building was to enable the newscasters to stay on the air and broadcast through a tornadic event,” says Coleman Harrison, Project Coordinator with Coreslab. “The building that was there previously was a 90 mile per hour wind design that they had been broadcasting out of since 1949.” At a total of 49,000 square feet, including the mechanical mez-zanine areas and a covered parking structure to give their vehicles protection from hail storms and debris, a total of 323 precast components were manufactured and used in the con-struction. The new facility enables the station to continue pro-viding important news updates to its viewers during tornadoes that are capable of causing severe damage. An EF3 tornado is capable of uprooting trees, lifting cars, and tearing the roofs off even well-constructed facilities. A group of five companies were involved in the project super-structure. CEC out of Oklahoma City handled the civil and structural engineering on the job. “We can do everything on the building except the architecture itself,” says Chris Snider, the structural engineer of record with CEC. “We try to focus on relationships because we know we’re going to see the archi-tects, contractors, and precast manufacturers on many projects throughout our careers. Doing what it takes to make sure everybody is successful is something that’s really important to us.” CEC has been recognized by Oklahoma ACEC (American Council of Engineering Companies) with awards for numerous projects, demonstrating its expertise and the quality of the work it performs. REES was the architectural design firm for the entire project. Short of the news station’s specialized broadcast equipment and set design, REES designed everything. The company is a national design firm specializing primarily in senior living, healthcare, cor-rections, security, and broadcast architecture. “We don’t design cookie cutter projects,” says Dennis Metheny. “Every project is uniquely designed.” REES has been recognized for its expertise numerous times, having won a Firm of the Year award from AIA Oklahoma, and an IIDA Pinnacle award to name a few. The construction manager at risk for the project was Manhattan Construction, one of the largest privately held construction firms in the United States. The company won an ABC Oklahoma “Excellence in Construction” award in the ten to twenty-five million dollar category for its contribution to the KFOR station project. “The company has more than forty years’ experience supplying both the Canadian and U.S. markets.”4 Unintech Consulting Engineers designed all the precast compo-nents that Coreslab manufactured for the structure. Unintech is a design and consulting firm with more than 26 years of experi-ence focused on providing quality value to customers in both the public and private sectors. The company offers structural, civil, and surveying services, but worked specifically on precast design for the KFOR project. Finally, Coreslab Structures was responsible for the manufac-ture and installation of all the precast concrete elements for the project. A major provider of structural and architectural concrete products, the company has more than forty years’ experience supplying both the Canadian and U.S. markets. The majority of the shelters designed by Coreslab have been gymnasiums for schools, but it has also built classroom pods, band rooms, cafeterias, a pom and cheer facility, an add-on shelter to the student housing facility at Oklahoma University, and a number of other structures. The company has its own engineering, drafting, and estimating departments so it does a great deal of front end work with customers, even during the design phases of a project. By working with Coreslab, customers can take advantage of its expertise toward devel-oping a project that is more precast-friendly and, as a result, more economical. As featured inMarch 2019SUPPORTED BYNext >