Brickell Plaza Tower

In Miami’s Brickell financial district, the first Class A+ freestanding office building is under construction in over a decade. With Downtown Miami and Biscayne Bay views, the luxurious 830 Brickell Plaza offers premium accommodations for the world’s leading companies, such as Microsoft, private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and Canadian asset management giant CI financial.

Challenge:
This project required meeting the demands of the enormous volume by using various formwork solutions for the entire project. To begin with, as it is an office building, each floor has the typical 13-ft 6-in. story height with 13-in. slabs. The challenge included using more than 10k sq. ft. of Framax to form the center four-cell cores with the dimensions of 122-ft 11-in. x 32-ft 8-in. with one entire face in exterior shear on MF240 rollback frames. These carried loads of steel plates attached to the Framax to achieve the finish on the outer wall. The Sky Lobby on level 30 introduced a cantilever on the southwest and northwest sides of the building―a maximum of 23-ft 8-in. This was in conjunction with the belt truss levels, which have massive steel imbeds encapsulated into all the shear walls, columns, and diagonal perimeter beams. When pouring slabs on levels 30 through 32, not only did the cantilevers present challenges, but the slabs were 16-in. roller-compacted slabs that were not allowed to be released until getting past level 32. This resulted in cumulative loads that created difficulties for all trades. Window installment, as well as loads on lower levels, required incredible engineering solutions.

Solution:
The most challenging central truss belt levels required Doka to come up with solutions that addressed these various challenges and the proximity of building in the congested area. Worker safety was an issue, as they would be working outside the building, 30 floors above ground level. Doka proposed installing Steel Girder panels from levels 27 to 28. These were to create the external platform that would be used to install Doka Staxo shoring to support the cantilever levels on levels 30 to 32. The solutions that solved the building challenges created additional issues due to the loads imposed on the lower levels. After many meetings and countless hours of close collaborations between Doka Engineering, DeSimone Consulting Engineers, G & E Florida Contractors, ANT YAPI USA, The RC Group, and PTE System, the issues were all successfully addressed, met, and overcame.