Location: Montgomery, Alabama
Completed: 1999
Cost: $42 million

This Federal Building and United States Federal Courthouse is a five-story, 180,000 square foot courts facility. It contains six District Courtrooms, four Magistrate and four Bankruptcy Courtrooms in addition to agencies of the U.S. Attorney, U.S. Marshal’s Service and offices of the District and Bankruptcy Court.

A cost-effective structural system for the unique building configuration was one of the major challenges. To accommodate all the programmatic requirements on this given site, it was necessary to “bend” the structure into a crescent shape defining a public plaza which serves as a major urban space leading to the Courthouse’s public entrance. For the circular building shape several steel and concrete systems were developed and evaluated based on cost and construction time.

The concrete frame, using a beam and slab system, proved to be the most cost-effective. The roof of the facility was constructed of structural steel to provide the slopes for the curved configuration. The lateral resisting system consists of beam and column-rigid frames.

The process of design and construction were closely monitored during all phases. The General Services Administration had full-time staff on-site during the total construction period. Early communication and coordination was the key to avoiding conflicts between disciplines.

Location: Mobile, Alabama
Completed: 1984
Cost: $54 million

Mobile Government Plaza is a 581,000 square foot complex, designed to house the county and city governments plus provide for courtroom needs. It covers an entire city block in downtown Mobile. The facility is composed of two buildings located over a full-size basement, a nine-story administration building and a ten-story judicial building, connected by a full-height public atrium.

The atrium roof has nine double-bow trusses that span 140 feet and a tenth truss spanning 240 feet in the other direction. The side glass walls of the atrium actually fit inside the first and second atrium roof trusses, thus exposing the two outside trusses to the elements. Due to the large expanse of these walls (140 feet wide x 130 feet average height), it was necessary to construct two-way vierendeel trusses made of 12-inch pipe members located on either side of each window-wall. To keep the sandwiched glass from breaking, the truss system had to be structured independently of the window-walls, making sure that the frame could accommodate movement due to roof loads, intense rain, large thermal effects and high wind loads.

LBYD met the engineering challenges, including attaining the architecturally specified roof profile and structural shapes, protecting the roof from coastal wind forces, protecting the building from corrosive salt air and allowing for the expansion and contraction between the concrete buildings, roof trusses and skylights.

LBYD, Inc. received two awards for the engineering design of the Mobile Government Plaza – the American Consulting Engineers Council 1997 Grand Award for excellence in engineering design signifying this project as one of the top eight engineering designs from all disciplines in the United States and the Consulting Engineers Council of Alabama 1997 Engineering Excellence Grand Award.