Phases one and two of the Orleans Parish Correctional Complex Plan are currently under construction.  The $145 million, 433, 409 square-foot project  is slated for completion in 2014 and will replace the original facility that suffered extensive damage during hurricane Katrina and was demolished in 2007.

Lerch Bates Inc. is providing vertical transportation consulting services for phases one and two of the three-phase project. Phase one will include a three-story kitchen and warehouse for the prison with three freight and one passenger traction elevator, while phase two is a new two-story administration building and Sheriff’s office with a three-story jail that will house five passenger elevators and two service cars.

Phase three is still in the design stages between joint architects Grace & Herbert Architects of Baton Rouge, LA and Sizeler Thompson Brown Architects of New Orleans.

Photo Courtesy of Sizeler Thompson Brown Architects

Lerch Bates is proud to have consulted on many of the tallest buildings in the world.

In the ever-continuing battle of the Super Talls, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architects are currently in the design phases of what will be the new tallest building in the world.  Upon completion, The Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia will rise more than 1,000 meters, dwarfing the current World’s Tallest Building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE, by more than 172 meters.  In addition, the Tower will house over 280,000 square meters GFA (gross floor area) and will be paired with a retail mall sized at over 97,000 square meters GFA.

Lerch Bates Inc. has been selected as specialty consultants to work with Smith + Gill Architects to provide Materials Management/Materials Handling and Waste Management services on this globally iconic, world class building.

Photos courtesy of architectism.com

Photo courtesy of Stannah Lifts

The Fleet Street Fresh Kitchen was in need of a scissor lift to move stock from the lower level preparation and delivery area to the street level coffee shop in order to provide fast customer service.

Lerch Bates and Stannah Lifts worked together, making the lift operable within five weeks to meet Fresh Kitchen’s January 10, 2011 opening deadline.

Read more about this alternative lift solution for Sainsbury’s Fresh Kitchen…

Lerch Bates’ façade access experts are assisting with the design and placement of ten different building maintenance units (BMU) within the Wuhan Greenland Center tower in Wuhan, China. The BMUs will travel through operable doors in the façade in order to access the building exterior.  Nine of these units will feature a “knuckling” or “multi-slewing” jib arm in order to provide complete façade access while minimizing the number of operable doors required.  Each unit will be able to suspend two workers and light tools in addition to the heaviest pane of glass present in the curtain wall, which will allow for glass replacement from the exterior.

The tower will incorporate several other revolutionary design techniques aimed at making the building more efficient. The footprint is a tripod shape with rounded corners, built around a composite concrete and steel core that tapers extensively as it travels upward. Additionally, vents will be built into the structure at the tips of the three legs, which will further improve the tower’s aerodynamic performance and house façade access equipment. Several other sustainable elements will also be integrated, including a greywater recovery system, a high efficiency lighting system, a daylight-responsive control system, and low-flow plumbing fixtures.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture recently won an international design competition to design the tower which upon completion will reach 606 meters (1,988 feet) high, becoming the world’s fourth tallest building.

Lerch Bates Inc. has been selected by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) to provide elevator and escalator consulting services for a five-year period commencing in January 2011.

Lerch Bates will provide full-time services to support the maintenance, repair and modernization of MARTA’s elevators and escalators, including specialized consulting, project management, design engineering, cost estimating, equipment condition assessments, work performance audits, standards development, incident investigations, construction inspections, contract and code compliance inspections, and training.

MARTA is the principal public transportation system serving the Atlanta metropolitan area.  For over thirty years, MARTA has served as the ninth largest transit system in the United States providing combined bus and rail service to DeKalb and Fulton Counties.  MARTA’s vertical transportation system consists of 112 elevators and 149 escalators primarily located at 38 transit stations, as well as other support facilities.

Lerch Bates brings decades of relevant experience to the project and has worked with several major metropolitan transit systems including Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Los Angeles’ Metro (LCAMTA). “We are excited about this opportunity to be working with MARTA,” said Bart Stephan, Lerch Bates’ President and CEO. “Lerch Bates will play an integral role on MARTA’s team to establish and sustain best-in-class status for their elevator and escalator program.”

A few months ago, I wrote a post about my involvement with the commissioning of the new building maintenance unit (BMU) at the Duke Energy Building in Charlotte, North Carolina.

At the time, it was thought that the Duke Energy BMU, with a telescoping boom that extends to approximately 130 feet, was the second largest BMU in the world.

And then I received a comment from a reader inquiring about a “World’s Largest BMU” list.  After a quick Google search, I found that no such list exists.

So I started asking around—it helps to know some of the foremost facade access consultants in the world—and got some great information from a colleague in our Lerch Bates New York office Don Zeni.

The world’s largest BMU (according to overall jib length) goes to 88 Philips Street in Sydney Australia.  This unit has a 5 stage jib with a maximum outreach of 156’-7” (47.75m) and an 18 foot (5.5m) vertical mast stroke.  In addition the Philips Street unit luffs up 45 degrees and down 25 degrees and weighs a whopping 250,000lbs.

Below is a short list of large BMU’s (according to jib or boom length).

Unfortunately there is no “official” ranking so this info is a best educated guess.  I’m certain there are more in the 40m – 45m range.

88 Philips Street – 156’-7” (48m)
Sydney, Australia – CoxGomyl

Dubai Jewel Tower – 154’-2” (47m)
Dubai, UAE – XS Platforms

EEUU – 137’-9” (42m)
Houston, TX (Largest in US) – Gind

One New Change – 134’-6” (41m)
London, UK – CoxGomyl

One Mellon Bank – 129’ (39.3m)
Pittsburgh, PA – Tractel

Duke Energy – 124’-7” (38m)
Charlotte, NC – CoxGomyl

Question: what do Las Vegas and Dubai have in common? (no, not that)

Answer: two Lerch Bates projects that made Popular Science’s Engineering Best of What’s New lists.

Veer Towers in Las Vegas, Nevada and Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE.

They were both honored with Popular Science magazine’s Best Of What’s New 2010 Engineering Award.  In addition, Lerch Bates Inc. was commissioned to lend its vertical transportation and facade access consulting expertise to both projects.

Veer Towers is part of the new MGM City Center, which has 250 elevators and 60 escalators. Of this total, Veer Towers has 8 elevators; four in each building.

The Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building and has the fastest double deck elevators at 1,969 feet per minute.  It also has the highest operating BMU (building maintenance unit) in the world, working at 2,345 feet.

And that was just for 2010. Let’s see what we have cooking for 2011.

From our “not for the faint at heart” files. Perched knee-knockly far from the Burj Khalifa, our engineers offer some perspective on just how high you are when servicing the outside of the tallest building in the world. Tom Cruise doesn’t have anything on us.

As consultants, we are expected to be the experts.  So, we spend a fair amount of our time doing research on new products that are on the market.  Honestly, it is amazing to see what is out there in new technology, including, elevators, Automated Guided Vehicles, Tug systems, Pneumatic Tube Systems, Pneumatic Chute Systems, AS/RS Systems (Automatic Storage/Retrieval Systems), and horizontal carousels to name a few.

In the past couple of weeks, we at Lerch Bates have had the opportunity to see some of the new robotic technology on the market for healthcare facilities, and I have to say that it seems we are getting closer to some of the technology portrayed in the sci-fi movies of the 1970s and 1980s.  Think R2-D2.  While we have yet to see a hover craft for unit material delivery in hospitals, we have still seen some pretty exciting technology.

Last week, Lerch Bates saw one such technology in action…the autonomous mobile robot.  These are small transport units available now, that can deliver up to 50 pounds of supplies, mail, samples, etc. These robots are intelligent enough to map an area and store where obstructions may be along a path so that they can travel along the route to get to the destination.  They can even detect people and can navigate around obstructions not on their map.  They are completely independent devices and can be programmed to say specific messages and play specific songs in route or at the destination.  It is almost as if they have been assigned a “personality.” These are definitely an option for anyone looking at possible solutions for small items to be transported via materials handling system, rather than using costly FTE “sneaker power.”  In some cases, these could even be used to relieve unit supply traffic on an existing Pneumatic Tube System.

Lerch Bates strives to continue to keep a strong pulse on the technologies available to give our clients the best options.  In fact, this is one of the best and most interesting parts of our job.  Who knows, maybe hover technology is next?