At 400 feet long, 210 feet wide and 86 feet tall, the Virginia Tech Indoor Practice Facility contains more than eight million cubic feet of space. Seventeen years in the making, the building stands taller than nearly all other college-level practice facilities, allowing team kickers to punt without hesitation and acts as a mixed-use center for soccer, lacrosse and baseball practices and games. Built to last, this substantial building includes indoor and outdoor practice fields, a coaches’ viewing deck and a 65-foot high catwalk.
Given the project size, creating the ideal roof system for the design-build project required significant consideration. At a massive 98,000 square feet, the structure must be strong enough to withstand the ice and snow of winters but also resist the intense heat of summer. The general contractor recognized that most manufacturers would be unable to rollform a continuous 238 foot panel, the length needed to span the building’s width.
Fabral’s Stand’N Seam panels proved to be the ideal solution. This high performance, mechanically seamed panel system allows unlimited thermal expansion while curving to fit the barrel vaulted roof. Since the panels were too big to be shipped, on-site rollforming was the only manufacturing option. To accommodate the panel length and weight, a crane was used to hoist the rollformer, operator and coil up to the eave of the building. After the machine operator ran each panel, installers would secure it – and begin installing the next panel when it was completed. The full roof was installed in 10 working days.
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