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Annual Report 2008

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Annual Report 2008 Annual Report 2008 Thornton Tomasetti provides building Services Offices engineering services to clients worldwide Building Structure Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on projects of all sizes and complexity, Buildings Chicago, Illinois from the tallest towers and the longest Supertall Buildings Dallas, Texas spans, to innovative building systems and Long-Span Structures Dubai, United Arab Emirates materials. Our three complementary Special Structures Fort Lauderdale, Florida practices in Building Structure, Building Skin Specialty Analysis Hong Kong, China and Building Performance serve the entire Project Delivery Irvine, California building life cycle for a wide range of clients Kansas City, Missouri including architects, building owners, Building Skin London, United Kingdom developers, building managers and others Building Skin Los Angeles, California who serve the construction industry. Specialty Skin Analysis Moscow, Russia Skin Systems Newark, New Jersey Our 650 engineers, architects and support Special Skin Structures New Haven, Connecticut professionals are committed to creating the Innovative Skin Materials New York, New York best solutions through our technical Skin Sustainability Oakland, California ingenuity, our pursuit of excellence, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania anticipating client needs. Building Performance San Francisco, California Forensics Shanghai, China Emergency Response Washington, D.C. Building Envelope Building Assessment & Renovation Historic Preservation Seismic Assessment & Rehabilitation Property Loss Consulting Sustainability Sectors Aviation & Transportation Commercial Cultural & Institutional Education Healthcare Hospitality & Gaming Mixed Use Residential Special Structures Sports & Entertainment Cover: The trademark frieze at the new Yankee Stadium plays a structural as well as an aesthetic role, serving as the end girder for the canopy. The stadium opens in May 2009. Chris Linder Photo. Back cover: A modern approach to the historic Yankee Stadium frieze, shown in a Tekla Structures building information model developed collaboratively by Thornton Tomasetti and fabricator Canam Steel Corp. Facing page: Top, the Bank of Oklahoma Center, designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli, in model (left) and as built (see page 14). Bottom, the Thornton Tomasetti Los Angeles team. 2 Chairman’s Message 3 President & Chief Executive Officer’s Message 5 Projects Building: Structure Skin Performance Gayle Babcock Architectural Imageworks, LLC 29 People Chris Kahanek Dan Cuoco, president & chief executive officer, and Tom Scarangello, chairman. Chairman’s Message Thomas Z. Scarangello, P.E. Our vision statement – Always reinvent how buildings We continue to embrace the potential for creativity and are imagined – and built – expresses the ideas central efficiency that Building Information Modeling (BIM) to our firm’s culture since our founding more than 50 offers. In 2002, when Thornton Tomasetti began to years ago. utilize BIM, our challenge was interoperability between software platforms. Having overcome that hurdle by We are never satisfied with the status quo. We always developing our own in-house suite of translators, and strive to innovate. with all of our new projects now designed with BIM, Our work is not done until our ideas are transformed we continue to push the technology. We now not only into reality. We imagine – and we build. incorporate models into our delivery process, we also regularly make them the deliverable for a host of We continue to execute our business plan in line with downstream users to further enhance a project’s our vision, adding and expanding services to better serve efficiency and economy. our clients and contribute innovations to our industry. Our firm has a long tradition of strategic planning, and at Our Building Skin Practice works at the dynamic the end of 2008 we began Vision 2014, our latest round intersection of architecture and engineering, beyond of five-year planning in which we look beyond the horizon traditional systems and materials. With the inventive to anticipate the evolving needs of our clients. This application of traditional and new materials, we are strategic plan is currently under development, and if our helping our clients create pioneering and cost-effective firm’s history is any indicator, Vision 2014 will soon building skin designs (see Chelsea Modern, pages 10–11). become our road map to the future. From building skin to building structure, the drive for Meanwhile, navigating today’s market requires close sustainable building design and construction continues to attention to the here and now. Yet, at the same time, grow – and with it so has our employees’ commitment subscribing to the notion that a crisis is a terrible thing to sustainable practices. With more than 100 LEED to waste, we also know it presents opportunities for (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) the long term. Looking beyond the significant challenges accredited professionals by year end, our firm accounts of the moment, we look forward to the continued for more than 10% of the world’s structural engineering support of our colleagues and clients and welcome the LEED accredited professionals. Our growing “green road ahead. team” is already helping our colleagues and clients think and build green for a more sustainable environment (see page 31). Thornton Tomasetti 2 Annual Report 2008 President & Chief Executive Officer’s Message Daniel A. Cuoco, P.E. Our growing geographic reach and greater integration headquarters of the first zero-energy city, Masdar, of diverse services enabled us to finish a challenging in Abu Dhabi (see pages 26–27). year in a strong position to help our clients maximize In the United States, one of our more prominent the value of their engineering investments. projects is the new Yankee Stadium (shown on the Along with challenges come opportunities, and we cover of this report and on pages 6–7), which will be must recognize the importance of building for strategic ready for opening day of the 2009 baseball season. growth, not only in good times but also through The market downturn that began in early 2008 is economic downturns. This will enable us to emerge defining a new business reality for 2009, and probably in a much stronger position when the economy starts beyond. As in previous downturns, we are prepared to rebound, and is consistent with our firm’s long-term to serve clients with a full suite of services for the entire strategic goals. building life cycle, from new designs to renovations In September 2008 we opened an office in San and rehabilitations of existing buildings. Francisco, and in February 2009 we completed the This past year, for example, one of our fastest growing acquisition of DASSE Design, bringing our California services was our property loss consulting business, presence to four offices and nearly 100 people. which provided rapid response for property damage San Francisco is now our center of excellence for assessment in Texas following Hurricane Ike and kept performance-based design, with a strong and our clients on a fast track to damage recovery (see growing expertise in the education, healthcare and pages 16–17). To meet the growing demand for such government sectors. services, we began embedding Building Performance With nearly one-third of our work this year coming expertise in each of our offices, a process we will from outside of the United States, we also opened complete in 2009. two offices in the Middle East, and expanded our By the end of 2008, the timing and pace of economic work in Asia, with a focus on China, South Korea and recovery remained uncertain. We will continue to India. We broke ground on the tallest buildings in China combine our innovative spirit with technical pragmatism and South Korea: Shanghai Tower, at 632 meters and to extract costs from every project and help our clients 151 Incheon Tower, at 601 meters (see pages 8–9 and achieve their goals despite the challenging economy. 12–13). At year end, we had more than 20 active projects in the Middle East, notable among them the Thornton Tomasetti 3 Annual Report 2008 © MediaWright Photography Representing our three practice areas are, from top: The sweeping structures of the Indianapolis Airport Terminal; a building skin design in steel and glass for the cap of Federation Tower in Moscow, which will be the tallest building in Europe; and a finite-element model of stress distribution at a gusset plate of the Interstate 35 bridge, which collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 (red denotes high stress; blue is low stress). Thornton Tomasetti 4 Annual Report 2008 Building: Structure Skin Performance Thornton Tomasetti 5 Annual Report 2008 A New House for Ruth Bronx, New York After playing at the House that Ruth Built for 85 years, to detailing,” said Mike Squarzini, Thornton Tomasetti’s in 2009 the New York Yankees will move across the project manager. “The thought process from the street to a new stadium that revives many of the very beginning of the project combined structural Structure design themes that were stripped from the original requirements and the highest level of aesthetics. during its 1974 renovation. The new stadium will It’s a pleasure to be part of a project team where include signature design features such as a 500-foot- the result is an elegant structure both technically wide scoreboard/video board with cantilevered end and visually.” bays, and a suite level and upper deck seating that cantilever 50 feet beyond the main level concourse,
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