At George Washington University’s Foggy Bottom campus, Clark is helping reimagine the school’s largest first-year residence hall, historic Thurston Hall. The project will transform the 95-year-old, 200,000-square-foot dormitory into a vibrant, amenity-rich living and learning community accommodating approximately 825 students.

A critical element of the halls’ structural integrity is the expansive floor beam structure that was built in 1929 and was unable to be modified as part of the new construction.  However, the project team had no original drawings to account for this architectural element. To work with and around this critical element, Clark enlisted the help of proprietary technology vendor Coda. Pairing construction data with decades of building expertise, Coda provides solutions that enable owners, developers, and designers to make smarter, more informed decisions prior to construction. Part of its suite of technology offerings, BuildingCheck is specifically designed to identify existing condition conflicts in renovation projects before first-cost negotiations conclude.

For the Thurston Hall project, Coda focused on identifying locations for slab penetration across the layers of tightly spaced concrete beams infilled with terracotta brick. The team leveraged best-in-class scanning capabilities across the building’s 200,000 square feet. With 10 levels worth of laser scans, Coda developed 3D models of the existing structure and its architectural features. In the span of just several weeks, Coda delivered a comprehensive BuildingCheck report encompassing 350 scans and 648 precisely modeled individual concrete beams.

Unlike traditional point clouds, which leave interpretation and analysis up to the owner, Coda’s proprietary software, modeling, and analyses provide deviation exhibits of existing conditions with the proposed design in an easily digestible format designed to help the owner make informed decisions that impact the overall risk profile of a project. The models can also be deconstructed into individual components and integrated with other 3D data visualizations of project components such as MEP systems or underground utilities.

Coda’s work in 2020 enabled George Washington University and the Clark project team to progress construction with unparalleled confidence. With demolition completed ahead of schedule, the team building Thurston Hall is well underway on foundations work and will be pouring concrete later this year.