Verizon 7th Ave. Pittsburgh

Verizon 7th Ave. Pittsburgh – Facade Renovation

The 575,000 square foot Verizon facility on 7th Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh is their largest Central Office in Western Pennsylvania, occupying a quarter of a city block.  This building houses switching equipment to service most of the East Coast, including direct lines to major facilities such as 911, all area hospitals, the PA Lottery, as well as the White House and the Pentagon.  This building is the fourth most important Central Office in Verizon’s portfolio. Due to the sensitive nature of the operations within this building, any disruption in service would be detrimental to Verizon. It goes without saying that when you have a facility such as this an owner must trust their construction partner explicitly.

Jendoco has been the preferred construction partner at the Verizon facility on 7th Avenue for nearly three decades. As such, in 2012, Verizon hired Jendoco to work with their design team to access and assess the existing conditions of every façade of this building.  This building stands 22 stories tall and contains approximately 220,000 square feet of vertical surface.  The result of this investigation was a report identifying all of the deficiencies in the existing façade including mortar loss, spalling masonry, and corroding steel.  These conditions created a safety hazard due to falling debris in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, as well as thermal issues and indoor air quality issues due to the failing envelope.

Jendoco was contracted to manage all aspects of the construction for each of these elements of work.  Due to the nature of the project , Jendoco supplemented our normal Verizon team with our exterior restoration personnel consisting of Rob Borland, and project superintendent Rick Reinhardt.  Michael Kuhn was the Project Executive.

During the first phase of the project there were up to 65 skilled craftsmen working daily on the William Penn Way façade, the transformer vaults, and the cooling tower replacements.  Three swing stages were utilized to perform the stone restoration from the roof down to Level 19 while three hydro-mobile scaffolds were used simultaneously to perform the brick and lintel replacement from the ground up through Level 18.  While the majority of the project was accessed from the exterior of the building, Jendoco coordinated the strict policies of Verizon for access within this building. Jendoco’s phasing plan was utilized to communicate adjacent work activities to each floor manager, followed by installation of interior protection to mitigate weather, dust, noise, and odor impacts.