TLC Engineering office achieves LEED certification

TLC Engineering for Architecture’s office at Creekside Crossing, Tenn., has achieved U.S. Green Building Council LEED for Commercial Interiors certification.

The engineering firm has occupied the office for years and when it came time to renovate and expand, they wanted the space to be more efficient and sustainable.

“We decided to pursue LEED certification before the project even started,” said TLC’s Russell Skrabut, who along with Steve Kemp, PE, directs the 23-person staff.

“It is corporate policy that all of TLC’s office renovations or relocations pursue LEED as part of their base building program.

“Our existing offices do their part through recycling, lighting controls and other green strategies,” Kemp said.

Their landlord, Duke Properties, provided a turnkey project using in-house architecture and a design-build approach with their own construction firm, Duke Construction.

Duke was willing to incorporate energy-saving and water-saving features into the 15,000-sq-ft renovation and build-out and their entire design and construction team was ready to embark on their first LEED project.

TLC engineers provided LEED consulting and commissioning services to ensure the equipment and systems worked as designed, and acted as a consultant to Duke’s LEED administrator, Jeff Hall of Hall Group Architecture.

TDOT Civil Rights Office honored with regional awards

The Tennessee Department of Transportation recently announced that its Civil Rights Office has earned two awards from the Southern Transportation Civil Rights Executive Council.

The awards were announced at the recent 2009 Southern Transportation Civil Rights Training Symposium, comprised of eight southern states.

The 2009 Best Practices Award was presented to the TDOT Civil Rights Office Affirmative Action Program Staff for its work on the quarterly Diversity Brown Bag Lunches.

The lunches were implemented to promote better understanding of the diverse cultures of TDOT employees and feature presentations by TDOT employees who volunteer to share information about their native countries.

These lunches have included presentations on Mexico, Egypt, China, Nigeria and other countries.

The 2009 Outstanding Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Award was presented to SRS Inc. for an outstanding job in assisting TDOT in accomplishing its work program objectives.

SRS has participated in TDOT sponsored workshops on estimating and bidding for other disadvantaged business enterprises, as well as provided subcontracting work to other small businesses.

Stunning sky sets scene for St. Andrew Lutheran Church cross raising

A huge cheer arose from the crowd as St. Andrew Lutheran Church’s cross claimed its new position atop the new bell tower – defining the Franklin, Tenn., skyline.

Seconds earlier, framed by an intense blue sky, the 9-ft, 260-pound cross had been gently hoisted by crane five stories into the air, where it swayed safely, several feet away from the tower.

Perched on the 63-ft-tall bell tower roof, an assistant with Ellis Welding reached up and grasped the base of the cross, gently steadying it, while Chris Ellis signaled the crane operator on the ground.

Baird Dixon, lead architect, said the stone nave of the church was strategically designed to face equally on both streets. Project Manager Carly Wansing doubled as photographer for the day and captured photos.

Designed by Street Dixon Rick Architecture, the stainless steel cross was fabricated by Kris Nethercutt, who owns KAL Metal Products.

The new space encompasses 9,000 sq ft. It is nearly complete, and dedication services will take place shortly after Easter 2010.

Randall Gill and Jeff Taylor with Orion Construction provided the crane and a lift for photographer Tom Gatlin.

Hendrick Construction to expand lab space at Oak Ridge

Hendrick Construction Inc. of Charlotte, N.C., was awarded a contract to upgrade 14,000 sq ft of lab space at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The project in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will create 13 new labs to support scientific research conducted at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the world’s most powerful source of neutrons for the study of materials.

Scientific understanding of the molecular structure of materials is critical to the development of stronger, lighter and cheaper compounds for a variety of commercial, industrial and other applications.

Work at the SNS can result in advanced technologies, such as smaller computers with more memory, lightweight plastics for airplanes and pharmaceutical drugs.

Hendrick recently started construction, and the project is scheduled to be complete in spring 2010.

The SNS, completed in 2006, creates pulsed neutron beams in order to study the structural details of molecules. When fully operational, it will harbor 25 state-of-the-art scientific instruments and be used by scientists and engineers from universities, industries and laboratories around the world.

Hendrick Construction is renovating part of the second floor of the Spallation Neutron Source Central Lab and Office Building.

The project, which is surrounded by other operational labs, includes the installation of x-ray, wet chemistry, magnetic materials characterization, protein crystallography and neutron optics labs.

TDOT identifies 111 structurally deficient bridges for replacement or repair

The Tennessee Department of Transportation recently identified 111 bridges across the state that will be either replaced, repaired or rehabilitated through a new initiative aimed at reducing the number of structurally deficient bridges in the state.

TDOT’s Better Bridges Program is a four-year program approved in 2009 by the Tennessee General Assembly that will utilize bonds to pay for the repair or replacement of more than 200 structurally deficient bridges in the state.

The 111 bridge projects selected for the first year of the bonding program are spread evenly across the three grand divisions of the state and include one project costing more than $20 million and five projects with costs of more than $4 million each.

The needed replacement of a bridge built in 1936 on State Route 33 (Maynardville Highway) over the Clinch River (Norris Lake) in Union County will be included in the first year program and is estimated to cost more than $20 million.