Bethlehem Contracting Steel Fabrication and Paint Facility

Bath, PA

Client: CC, Inc. Construction Services
Owner: Bethlehem Contracting Company

BIA was selected by CC, Inc., as the lead design professional in the project team for the Bethlehem Contracting Steel Fabrication and Paint Facility; a $3 million, 36,000-square foot, steel-braced frame construction, clear-span building with corrugated metal panel siding and roofing. The building is as long as two football fields. The client is a steel fabricator for large-scale projects and needed to tuck the 60-by-600-foot building between a railroad line and an existing large fabricating facility. To keep costs down, the owner wanted to contain the height of the building. However, the massive size of the beams to be fabricated required maneuvering by large bridge cranes, and the cranes demanded a clear span of the building and sufficient head room to operate. BIA engineers worked closely with the owner and crane manufacturer to design a building that was just tall enough to meet all requirements, with a clearance of less than a foot above each crane's highest point and an average roof height of 25 feet. Another project challenge involved providing a paint room for the gigantic beams. Typical manufacturing plants use proprietary "off the shelf" paint booths to contain flammable and environmentally hazardous particles, but nothing was available in the scale the client needed. Instead, the design team made one-third of the building a massive paint area, providing all of the safeguards and protections that the typical booth would provide. Air handling and filtering systems were designed to contain particles. Non-sparking electrical equipment was specified to prevent potential explosions. Parking spaces were also added to accommodate the larger workforce at the site, and we were able to minimize site development costs by incorporating storm water management into the existing conveyance system on the industrial campus.

Project Value: $3 million

Design Dates: 2001
Construction Dates: 2001 - 2002
Service Dates: September 2002