176 www. bus- ex. com JANUARY 10 Miami

With fewer projects going up in downtown Miami, there are plenty of experienced construction workers to help Suffolk Construction put the finishing touches on the LEED Silver Met2 project, as David Hendricks learns from Scott Prince, senior project manager Suffolk Construction: Met2 JANUARY 10 www. bus- ex. com 177 the podium, which is the first 19 floors that abuts the hotel and goes over to the office tower. Inside the office tower there's a cast- in- place concrete core surrounded by the pre- cast up to level 19, and then it switches over to structural steel from there to the top. All the various components have been one of the biggest challenges of this project: the structural engineer has the elements framework he's designed, the architect is trying to fit his façade around it, and the mechanical engineer is trying to figure out the best system to go with the structure that's been provided." The contracting crew had the bulk of the design plans up front, before ground was even broken. Fast- forward to the present day, and only a few details remain to be decided, such as the finishings for the five- star hotel. " I took this project on in part because of the many challenges," Prince says, one of them being a large staff to manage on site. " I like working with the younger guys, to help them learn the business. I understand the excitement they've been feeling, having worked on a 50- story building myself when I began my career 25 years ago in Atlanta." He notes the good fortune in not having to deal with existing sidewalks on this job site. " We're going right to the curb, and that was a tremendous plus, because it gives us another five feet of land to work with. The north side of the site has a lane where a road will eventually go, and we've used that as a delivery route for materials. T he economic downturn is expectedly taking its toll on construction projects in Miami as it is on other major metropolitan cities in the nation. One certain indication is the lack of giant cranes on the skyline. One of the last few was taken down recently, as the $ 300 million, 2.6- million- square- foot project known as Met2, begun in mid- 2007, nears completion. Boston-based Suffolk Construction is general contractor on the project, which consists of 753,000 square feet of Class A office space in a 47- story tower and an adjacent 41- story tower in the heart of downtown. It will house the 376- room five- star Marquis Hotel, which will be operated under the JW Marriott Collection brand. Suffolk's senior project manager on Met2, Scott Prince, says it's a challenge building two large projects on a single 19- story podium on a full city block, and it involves the logistics of many kinds of construction on one site, coordinating it to the point where it all meshes together with accuracy and efficiency. The podium includes the office and hotel lobbies, nearly 18,000 square feet of column- less ballroom and meeting space, ground level retail shops, a restaurant and lounge, and a 1,500- car parking garage. The roof of the podium will be a lanai deck containing the hotel's pool, fitness center, spa and a regulation- size basketball court. " There's post- tension concrete on the hotel," he says. " There's pre- cast joist and soffit beam construction on Miami nice