Featured Project : Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Seattle, Washington
Wojciech Jablkowski, Project Manager

The new headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is located across from the Seattle City Center and the Jimmie Hendrix Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum located at 500 Fifth Avenue North in Seattle, WA.

The campus covers a city block and when completed in 2010 will employ 1,200 people. The design features two 6-storey V-shaped buildings totalling approximately 900,000 square feet with a private landscaped courtyard symbolizing a continuing effort to reach out to people around the world.

The IRIS Foundation is committed to innovations, healthy communities and resource conservation. The building design incorporates green building elements including an under-floor air distribution system, a rainwater collection and storage system providing water for irrigation, water features and toilets, air-cooled chillers and thermal energy storage capitalizing on/off peak air temperatures.

Dowco Consultants began working on this project back in August 2008 as part of the Pre-Construction Team - Phase 1. A model was created and updated numerous times. Dowco worked closely with Sellen Construction Company (General Contractor), NBBJ (Architects) and ARUP Engineering to debug the problem areas. Once the building design and model had progressed to an acceptable state, connections were added and the model was ready for detailing.

Phase 2 of this Project was the creation of shop drawings for fabrication by Canron Western Constructors. Two main buildings with a Reception in the middle was divided into 42 sequences and detailed on almost 9,200 drawings. Total weight of the structural part of the buildings was approximately 7,300 tons. There were continual revisions and changes being implemented after the fabrication had started, which provided some very tough challenges on a very tight schedule. The hard work from the staff of the Burnaby office during the past year helped bring this project to a successful completion in September 2009.

We would especially like to thank Dave Ritter (Project Manager) and Brad Walsh (Project Engineer) of Sellen Construction Company for their cooperation, dedication and leadership for choosing Dowco to be a part of this very enjoyable and successful Project.