Flathead County 911 Dispatch and Emergency Coordination Center, designed by CTA Architects Engineers,  is a 12,197 square foot building with a call center, emergency operation center, offices, vestibules, corridors, mechanical equipment rooms, equipment cache, and storage. It is a one-story CMU building with a two story CMU tower in the center to house mechanical equipment.

It has conventional spread and strip concrete footings, CMU walls, pilasters, lintels, and parapets. The roof is framed with steel (bar joists, steel deck, miscellaneous steel canopies) and it has pre-cast hollowcore planks for the mezzanine floor of the mechanical tower and pre-cast hollowcore planks for the roof of the mechanical tower. The equipment room has an 18-inch deep access floor system which consists of 2-inch thick concrete planks supported on steel pipe posts at 24-inches on center each way. The access floor is used to route wiring and ducts below the usable floor and each 2-ft square panel is removable for maintenance purposes. A 15-foot diameter satellite dish is mounted on the roof (we worked with the satellite manufacturer to create a support pier for the dish). It also has a 100-ft tall steel lattice type communications tower. The tower was designed by others, but we designed the micro pile foundation to support it.

More space was needed for the high school, junior high, and elementary school students. New construction includes two-story classroom wings for high school and junior high students, a new 12,000 sf gymnasium with a 29-foot clear height to the bottom of the roof deck, and other miscellaneous circulation areas such as corridors, elevators, and stairs. Additional new construction is attached to the existing high school built in 1982. A block veneer pattern is integrated with metal panel siding to compliment the existing building. The completed project has a capacity for 900 students.

This building provides 94,000 square feet of space for middle school students. It includes a 42-foot tall gymnasium, a media room, a technology lab, a cafeteria, and of course classrooms and administrative offices. The classroom and offices wings are two stories and the gymnasium portion of the building is one story with mezzanine levels for additional seating. The floors are framed of steel beams that are designed as composite members working with the concrete topping slab. The roof is framed with steel beams and steel bar joists. The walls are mostly light gauge metal studs that in-fill the steel frame, although the gym walls are concrete masonry. The lateral force resisting system is mostly concentrically braced frames and concrete masonry shear walls. The foundation is conventional concrete walls and footings with some concrete grade beams to resist overturning forces.

The Missoula Mercantile Warehouse Building was constructed between 1880 and 1900. The walls are made of brick masonry, the floor and roof are framed with wood. Archaic timber trusses span 50 ft. and support the roof structure in one area of the building. Over the years the structure has served in many different roles, from its original warehouse function for supplying wagon trains to a sawmill complete with a stream running through the basement. It also housed the Front Street Theatre and will now be home to the Trailhead, an outdoor gear supplier based in Missoula. Our role in the project was the complete structural upgrade of the existing building to support the new loads of a retail space. In addition, we designed upgrades to support the lateral loads of the Missoula region.

The existing building was a 21,000 square foot office building originally built in the 1910’s with 18-inch thick brick walls and wood floor and roof framing. About 35% of the existing building was added during the 1950’s with cast-in-place concrete frames supporting concrete floors and a concrete roof. Today’s addition adds approximately 7,500 square feet including more office space, a loading dock, and a 34-foot tall entrance lobby. The project is cost-driven with an aesthetic goal to match the existing building. Both the existing building and the addition are two stories tall with a full-height basement.

This is a new one-story classroom building for trades such as welding, wood carpentry, automotive repair, and other occupations. The building concept is to express a very thin roof profile with large cantilever- up to 23 feet. In addition, the top 6-feet of all exterior walls are translucent panels to allow an abundance of natural light to filter into the building. The walls are discontinuous at a horizontal joint 19-feet above the floor slab. The CMU walls are designed as free-standing cantilevers from the concrete footings, which created a condition where no shoring was required. The roof diaphragm loads are transferred behind the translucent panels down to the CMU walls with steel diagonal bracing. The roof framing system is custom-designed steel framing with a maximum clear span of 66-feet. The interior is totally column free.