Orange County Convention Center, Phase V

The Convention Center’s expansion includes approximately 1,000,000+ SF of unobstructed exhibit hall space supported by 218,020 SF of meeting rooms, 511,730 SF of public circulation, lobbies, concourses, and pre-function space along with 1,124,990 SF of back-of-the-house facilities. The project is located in Orange County, Florida. Key structural steel components consisted of large span jumbo trusses which were supported by nine-foot diameter cast in-place reinforced concrete columns. These trusses required visual inspection of tension controlled high strength bolts and non-destructive testing of moment connections using ultrasonic sound waves.

Construction costs for the building and site were approximately $750+ million with the total project topping out at approximately $1 billion dollars. Universal Engineering Sciences (UES) was responsible for managing a staff of up to six inspectors on-site daily to include our MBE/WBE Threshold staff.

UES provided threshold inspection services and geotechnical engineering on this facility, one of the largest construction projects to date in the southeastern United States. Threshold inspections included daily observation and reporting of muck removal, vibro-compaction, driven piles, compaction grouting, rebar, shoring, reshoring, post-tensioning, cast in-place concrete, masonry, composite decking and structural steel (long span trusses which include bolts, welds, etc.). Specialty inspections included mechanical couplers, concrete repair, epoxy doweling and “Hilti” fastening pins.