The Worship Center
There are handful of commercial wall and ceiling contractors that are church members at the Worship Center. When this project came out for bid, we all got together and collaborated how we could all work together on this project. The decision was made to all perform work on a portion on the project, with Smucker Company installing all the cold formed metal framing (Div 5) work on the project. So, this project is extra special because as competitors we were all able to work together peacefully to build a great project.
The cold formed metal framing portion of the project was mostly outside work and most of the work was done in the late fall and winter time of 2009/2010, which was one of our most snowy winters in a long time. This created extra challenges with schedules, not being able to work full weeks, having to get our power lifts around the building with all the deep snow on the ground, etc. In spite of all these challenges, the project was completed in July, 2010, one entire month ahead of schedule.
- Client: The Worship Center
- Location: Lancaster, PA
- Project Type: Places of Worship
- Contractor: R S Mowery & Sons, Inc.
The actual framing work on the project was a huge undertaking. Every exterior wall in the building is built using cold formed metal. There are many different distinct areas within the building…office, “Main Street” corridor, 1,500 seat auditorium, children’s classrooms, café, youth auditorium, and gym. With each of these areas came many different roof lines and different roof heights. So, not only were we building all the exterior walls that are seen, we were also building many “hidden” exterior walls where roof heights change, paraphet walls were needed, etc.
Most of the work was done off of lifts, some with articulating booms as high as 50 ft. However, in some places on the roof where a lift couldn’t reach the work area, we needed to build scaffold, which in some cases was over 20’ high on a roof that was already over 30’ from the ground level.
There was also lost of detail work that was built into the exterior walls. The design included many “bump-outs”, large windows, soffits and fascia that all needed metal stud back-up framing. Also, some of the walls were over 40’ high and needed lots of lateral bracing to meet the design criteria of the exterior wall deflection. There were snow loads to consider on our exterior walls and paraphets because of the many elevation changes on the roof and the possibility of drifting snow in these areas.
This was a very enjoyable project for Smucker Company because of the close connection to the project that was there because of being a member of the Worship Center. In addition, as a mentioned before, it was enjoyable because of the unique experience of being able to work with many of our competitors.