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Work begins early for Stacey Oxendine Plant Manager for Owen Steel
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Most New Yorkers would be surprised to learn that work on the World Trade Center (WTC) Transportation Hub is underway on the outskirts of Columbia, S.C. However, Owen Steel Company Inc., has been fabricating steel since 1936 and has played a prominent role in the recent construction of many of New York’s most notable structures. The company’s projects include JFK Airport International Arrivals Terminal, St. George Ferry Terminal, New York Times Tower, One Bryant Park, as well as the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum at the WTC.
Work begins early for Stacey Oxendine Plant Manager for Owen Steel. Mr. Oxendine began his tenure at Owen as a production engineer 14 years ago, and today he manages the daily scheduling for both the workers and the company’s production. These days he stays particularly busy as they continue to move large pieces of the architect Santiago Calatrava’s future WTC Transportation Hub through the facility.
We asked Mr. Oxendine three questions about Owen Steel and its fabrication work.
Where does Owen Steel fit into the WTC redevelopment?
Mr. Oxendine: The short answer is that we are a steel contractor, responsible for ordering the steel from the mills, building it, shipping it and erecting it. From the beginning, a general contractor (GC) or owner’s representative hires us to do work for a project owner. The owner has a structure designed by their architects and engineers. They give the drawings to us, and our engineers figure out how everything fits together. We may make structural recommendations to the GC on more efficient ways to put the structure together.
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| The facility is divided into three shops |
From this stage we’ll know how many columns, beams, and connectors will be used to fit everything together. The project’s pieces are then put on drawings by our detailers and sent to the owner’s design team for approval. Once approved, the drawings go into one of our fabrication shops. We don’t make steel (the “I” beams as so many people have come to know them by), but using the steel ordered from mills, we build it out according to the engineer’s plans and specifications.
When the work is finished it is usually loaded onto trucks or railcars and delivered to the project. We have representatives at the job site and on hand for the steel erection. Our job isn’t finished until the structural steel is up.
How do the fabrication shop’s general operations work?
Our facility is divided into three shops based on the size of the steel and the fitting that needs to be done. Our “A” Shop works on the more complex pieces, while work gets relatively easier as you progress down through the “B” and “C” Shops. Our steel , which usually comes from domestic suppliers (although the Transportation Hub steel has some pieces not available domestically that are rolled at a mill in Luxembourg), is stored in our receiving bay. It is bar coded and assigned a project number so we know exactly what part of the building it is designated for.
Steel is ordered in large pieces with the intention of cutting it down to the size needed. For example, the mills don’t make five-foot beams, so we would order a 20-foot beam and then cut it down to size. If we’ve ordered steel correctly, I’ll only see little pieces of scrap metal in waste containers. As the shops are ready for the different pieces of work, steel is brought in from the receiving yard.
The work underway in the shop right now is unique in that we have had so much Transportation Hub steel to prepare that we had to rearrange our shops. While not the most ideal circumstances for the guys this past winter, we had our plate-cutting operations outside in the receiving bay. Then, due to the weight and size of the steel, the lines have been a little blurred between the different shops in the building.
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| Each piece of steel is carefully tracked as it moves through the shop |
The girders and trusses we are fitting out now are large. While the equipment we use and the building itself is robust, the current pieces we have in the shop are extremely large. When you are moving steel around that is 20 feet long and weighs up to 50 tons, that is difficult and requires major equipment and a lot of space.
What does it mean to “fit-out” steel?
This is when we take a piece of steel and make additions or “build it out” as indicated in the engineer’s drawings. The steel is ordered from the mills in a generic shape, often in the shape of plates and beams. We take these pieces and begin adding the extensions, fittings, and drilling the holes. Depending on the shape of the final piece of steel, we will need to cut and weld multiple pieces together to get the needed result. By subjecting a piece of steel to different temperatures, the steel will also contract or expand to the shape needed.
In a couple of the projects on the floor now, we’ve welded pieces together to create the needed piece. When we are finished with the welds the joints will be as strong as if the steel were one piece.
Besides the design, there are other factors that make each job unique. For example, building construction codes and fall rules are different from city to city on how long a construction worker’s safety line can be. This means the number of holes drilled for the workers to secure their lines to will vary.
What’s interesting is that we don’t ever know a building by what it looks like when it is finished. We know the building by an address and the shape it makes when all the fittings are put together before the exterior is added. But we are all proud to be working on the biggest and most complex steel structures in New York City!
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