Big finish

Mississippi Supreme Court interior work requires value engineering, detailing

By Angelle Bergeron

Justice may be swift in Mississippi, but construction of its highest court certainly hasn't been.

In March, Evan Johnson & Sons Construction Inc. of Richland/Brandon, Miss., received the notice to proceed on the $15 million contract for "new court facility tenant work," which includes completion of the interior of the Supreme Court building.

The poured-in-place concrete structure and outer shell of limestone cladding was completed by Roy Anderson Corp. in January 2004.

One of many large projects in the Capitol Complex in Jackson, the building's construction timetable has been dictated by legislative bond revenues. The slow pace dictated by the funding cycles allowed ample time for Evan Johnson & Sons to work on value engineering with the owner and line up subcontractors and material orders, said Glen Williamson, superintendent.

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"The sheetrock has been on allocation for four months, but our subcontractor (Acoustics Inc. of Jackson) knew what we were going to need and has a lot of buying power," said Mark Lewis, also a superintendent on the job. "So it wasn't a problem for us."

The completed exterior gave the contractor an opportunity to work without any down time, Lewis said.

"The contract says completion is two years from groundbreaking, but we're looking at 18 months from today," he added.

Getting materials inside a finished structure created a challenge.

"All of the interior CMU walls, from basement to fourth floor, had to be hand off-loaded onto a hoist and unloaded," Williamson said. The absence of an elevator dictated all materials would either be carried up the main central staircase by laborers or off-loaded by hand through a window from an exterior hoist.

Lewis and Williamson remedied the problem by contracting American Mast Climber of Whitney, Texas, to custom-make an interior hoist that would fit into the poured-in-place concrete elevator shaft.

"We couldn't find anybody that housed an interior hoist with the cab we needed," Lewis said. "It had to be custom-made to accommodate the existing doors and structure."

The interior walls and specially designated areas with reinforced blast walls required more than 60,000 concrete masonry units.

"Normally, we do schools and prisons and that allows 250,000 blocks in them," said Bobby McCraw, project manager for Ellis Masonry Inc. of Pearl. "This was only 60,000, but having to handle them so many times and get them where they had to be was difficult." Of course, electrical, sheetmetal, carpenters, sheetrock installers and plumbers were all trying to use it at the same time.

Ellis went through the same painstaking process with the concrete and mortar.

"We had to have the concrete truck back into the basement, load in the wheelbarrows, carry on the hoist, get it to where we needed it and bucket it in," McCraw said. "Normally, what we do is pump it in."

Still, these challenges didn't ruffle Lewis, who has managed the construction of numerous casinos on the Gulf Coast.

"A casino has numerous challenges," he said. "We're used to erecting buildings three times the size of this in half the time."

The second floor, which houses the main court room, has more intricate design elements and high-end finishes than the rest of the building, said David Morris, lead architect with Eley Associates of Jackson, one part of the project's joint venture design group, ECD Architects and Engineers. The joint venture also includes Cooke Douglass Farr Lemons Ltd. Architects Engineers and Dale and Associates, both of Jackson.

"The primary hallway recalls both the old and new capitol corridors, and the main courtroom is modeled after the old Supreme Court room and the house chamber in the new capitol," Morris said.

ECD, which also worked on several other Capitol Complex projects, was charged with giving "the third branch of government a monumental space equivalent to the Legislature and governor's mansion," Morris said.

The result is a series of vaulted ceilings and dormer windows adorned with elaborately fashioned gypsum plaster ceiling pieces that merge in challenging geometric angles.

For the contractor, the sequential, detailed installation of such elements is more painstaking than anything else. Once the curved, segmented steel framework is installed, sheetrock is attached in stagger patterns with all sorts of challenging angles, Lewis said.

Then the acoustical ceiling panels are set according to detailed instructions, placing the points first and then placing the pieces so that they pitch upward toward the ceiling.

"This is something rarely seen in Mississippi," Lewis said.