Construction on the MFCU corporate facility started in the spring of 2009. Light gauge steel studs support the perimeter bearing walls and steel bar joists support a concrete floor system. A tremendous amount of natural light enters the building through the clerestory structure which is supported by exposed structural steel braces. The owner, contractor, and the entire design team (CTA Architects Engineers) worked closely during the design phase to assure the best possible product.

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.

An assessment of the structural integrity of this 5-story access platform was made by using a state-of-the-art finite element modeling software.  The structure is installed at a US Army Base in Nevada.  It is subjected to very high seismic activity and must support sensitive testing equipment.  Eclipse worked closely with our client, a US Army contractor, to assure that the platform and the adjacent structure which provided much of the support, could withstand code required load cases.

The ISB is a laboratory building used by various scientists and researchers. The floors are steel and concrete composite framing, the roof is heavy steel, the entry canopies are glue-laminated timer, and the foundation is 12-inch thick conventional cast-in-place concrete on spread/strip footings. Allowable soil bearing pressure is 8,000 psf. About 100 tons of mechanical equipment is housed in the mechanical penthouse which is efficiently located under the tallest portion of the roof. Two heavy steel trusses support the roof and four levels of concrete floors over the extra-large lecture room on the first floor. Seismic and wind forces are resisted with steel seismic towers anchored to the foundation with 2 ½-inch diameter steel rods.

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.

The 100-ft tall steel observation towers were free climbed and visually inspected to determine the condition and any required repairs for the structures. An extensive code check was provided on the structures with recommendations to bring the structural and safety components up to date with current code requirements. Eclipse created a finite element model of the towers to help define the need of retrofit work. One of the tower inspections included the addition of a stairs and a viewing platform, designed to be accessible to the public.