CLEMSON, S.C.—The under-construction Clemson University Alumni & Visitors Center has topped out, marking a major mile post in its construction, due to be completed later this year.  Brasfield & Gorrie is working on the project at the South Carolina college along with design partners Goodwyn Mills Cawood and Cooper Carry.

This five-story, 98,000-square-foot building will be home to various Clemson institutions, including the Class of 1944 Visitors Center, the Michelin Career Center, alumni association and admissions office.

“Topping out is an exciting time because we get to recognize the people whose skill and hard work make construction projects possible,” Brasfield & Gorrie Vice President and Division Manager Ben Barfield said at the event. “The Alumni & Visitors Center topping-out milestone is particularly special because most of our project team are Tiger alumni.

“What a great feeling and accomplishment for our team to invest in their alma mater and college community.”

Brasfield & Gorrie’s other projects at Clemson University include the Memorial Stadium renovations and Clemson University Women’s Sports Program expansion. The firm has 13 offices in total encompassing 3,500 employees and was ranked by Engineering News-Record as the 21st largest contractor nationwide in 2023.

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CLEMSON, S.C. — Clemson University is currently in the midst of the largest campus development initiative in its history, implementing a facilities plan designed to help place it in the public eye among the best institutions of learning in America.

Students have not simply been spectators in the process but have rather been active participants in every stage. Faculty well-versed in construction science and management, civil engineering and the School of Architecture have capitalized on the construction boom by working campus projects into their curriculums, turning job sites into classrooms.

By teaming up with Clemson’s Facilities department and the general contractors of major projects like the new College of Business facility, professors have been able to offer students real-world, hands-on experiences with the construction process that could never be replicated in a traditional classroom.

“We have a perfect learning lab here,” said Paul Borick, senior project manager for Clemson Facilities, who organizes site tours and facilitates building-related learning opportunities for students and professors. “This is a great opportunity for students to see footings, concrete foundation walls, structural steel framing and the most modern equipment and construction methodologies in action — some students sat in on our early design meetings.

Construction of the nearly 180,000-square-foot College of Business facility is a prime example of these learning opportunities. Nestled into the hillside across from Bowman Field, the new home for business education at Clemson is quickly rising from the ground. When finished, it will nearly double the space available in historic Sirrine Hall, the college’s current home.

The project will feature two towers, North and South, connected on the ground and first floors by an expansive outdoor stairway and plaza, and by an interior hallway on the building’s ground floor. The majority of the North Tower will comprise classrooms and labs, while the four-story South Tower will primarily house faculty and staff offices and workspaces.

The new home for the College of Business is set to open in 2020 and will provide the Clemson community with a think tank environment, bringing students, faculty and industry together in a collaborative, inspiring space that is forward-thinking in its design and daily application. Business students will have the kind of attractive environment that compels them to work, engage, study, ask hard questions, challenge themselves and work together.

As the construction manager of record, DPR is charged with balancing the project’s scope, schedule and budget, and coordinating the subcontractor trades. DPR is teamed up with Greenville contractor Sherman Construction on the project. DPR and Sherman also built Clemson’s new 142,500-square-foot Football Operations Center, which opened last year.

Wendy York, dean of the College of Business, says the new building is a sign of the commitment university leadership has made to the future of business education at Clemson.

“This world-class learning facility will become a magnet for drawing quality students in pursuit of a business degree that will open doors for them,” said York. “And its location, in the heart of campus, will tell all who pass by that Clemson means business.”

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CLEMSON, S.C. — Too often when educational facilities look to add unique or architecturally impactful buildings on campus, restrictive fire codes put a damper on designs or threaten to significantly increase costs and compromise functionality.

However, Clemson University, which recently constructed a new state-of-the-art home for its 2016 NCAA championship football team, was able to rethink conventional wisdom with a radical, more flexible approach to fire code interpretations.

The Allen N. Reeves Football Complex is the first in South Carolina history to use a performance-based design code analysis approach (tested to meet specific goals) to fire code safety, instead of a traditional prescriptive approach (adhering strictly to written codes), according to Paul Borick, one of Clemson University’s Capital Projects project managers for renovations and new construction.

“Universities have so many uniquely shaped or large volume spaces — like sports centers, pools, weight rooms, aerobic rooms as well as classrooms and labs pushed up against multistory structures and assembly areas — that don’t quite fit the prescriptive fire code,” said Borick.

Performance-Based Design

In traditional prescriptive-based designs, building codes usually require specific, measurable design criteria that are meant to govern typical building situations, based on past loss history and standard construction methods. While this works well in routine cases, the approach can lack flexibility when buildings have unusual design parameters.

As an International Code Council (ICC)–accepted alternative, however, performance-based design allows “alternate materials and methods” that offer equivalent or superior fire safety performance. In terms of enhancing fire safety, this often involves using scientific calculations and engineering as well as computer fire modeling to determine how a building would respond to fire. With this approach, a design is considered acceptable if the fire engineering calculations demonstrate that it meets the measurable performance criteria set at the start of the process.

In Clemson’s case, to consolidate operations the university sought to construct the 142,500-square-foot Allen N. Reeves Football Complex adjacent to its existing indoor football practice facility and outdoor practice fields.

The state-of-the-art building, designed by national architecture firm HOK and Goodwyn Mills and Cawood Inc. (GMC), with offices throughout the southeast, adjoins the indoor practice facility and outdoor practice fields, consolidating football operations into one complex. The complex features include 1.5 acres of outdoor leisure and entertainment space, hydrotherapy, training, a weight room, steam room, recovery room and a Gatorade fuel bar.

“We wanted to put a new two-story football complex building next to our indoor practice facility, which has a full football field, but the prescriptive code made this difficult,” said Borick, who sought to avoid separating the two buildings in order to keep the team on a tight, regimented schedule.

This design was important to allow players to go from one area to the next (such as from the weightlifting room to the practice field) without having to walk outside in adverse weather conditions, according to Borick.

“The challenge was that if we attached the two buildings, the prescriptive code would have required us to separate the buildings by 60 feet or to create a firewall between them as well as fireproof all the existing structural steel in our big, open 100,000-square-foot facility,” said Borick. “This would have cost well over $1 million, so we had to find an alternative.”

Clemson University turned to Jensen Hughes Inc., a global fire protection and life safety engineering and consulting firm. In addition, as required by the South Carolina Office of State Engineer, the university employed Fisher Engineering Fire Protection Engineers, located in Johns Creek, Ga., to perform an independent third-party peer review of the Jensen Hughes performance-based code analysis. Fisher also had extensive experience with performance-based designs.

“The way the building was configured, it did not fit into the prescriptive requirement box,” said Mike Ernst, senior fire protection engineer at Jensen Hughes. “So we looked at the intent of the prescriptive code requirements and asked, ‘What’s the goal? What level of safety is the prescriptive code requirement trying to meet?’”

Due to the project’s unique design requirements, modification of the indoor practice facility was necessary to accommodate the construction of the adjacent two-story building.

“We went back and analyzed how they could configure it to meet the prescriptive code requirements, which meant making a two-story building a big single-story building,” said Ernst. “We then compared the level of safety of the single-story configuration to the desired two-story building configuration.”

By adopting a performance-based design approach, computer egress modeling software and an innovative smoke detection technology, the university was able to dramatically reduce the project cost while increasing safety. In a performance-based design approach, it turns out, one of the ways to meet safety code is to use egress modeling.

As such, Jensen Hughes employed Pathfinder egress modeling, which enables advanced evaluation of pedestrian movement, evacuation, and congestion studies through software-based simulation. This included going to the facility and observing how the football players moved throughout their existing building and interacted with each other in egress corridors and room exiting.

“Jensen Hughes staff filmed how our football players exited their main team room and moved together before entering their individual position meeting rooms,” said Borick. “They analyzed the video to determine how their exit could be expedited and restrictions removed.”

Along with this, Clemson University used advanced smoke detection technology in the form of four VESDA-E VEA fire alarm system units, manufactured by Xtralis, a global provider of early detection and remote visual verification of fire, gas and perimeter threats.

To read the entire article, check out the September/October issue of School Construction News.

Del Williams is a technical writer based in Torrance, Calif., who writes about business, technology, health and educational issues.

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