Join McCownGordon Construction for this presentation on the construction of the Church of the Resurrection and the unique challenges they faced.

COR is the largest United Methodist Church in the US with more than 22,000 members. Designing and building this $81 million project posed some unique challenges for structural and MEP engineers and virtual construction professionals.  The program would include specific examples of some unique challenges and how they were overcome from the viewpoint of these three disciplines.

Structural: Long-span roof trusses and inward-sloping steel-supported walls created a column-free space. There were virtually no straight lines in the elliptical building creating some unusual geometry that could not be expressed well in 2D. It took extreme coordination between the structural team and the BIM modeling team to ensure that each column was in the correct location and that everything was matching up.

MEP: Two unique challenges for the MEP team included the choice to go with a displacement under-floor air system using construction voids created  by the sloped seating areas to provide conditioned air to diffusers under the main level and balcony. Due to the acoustic sensitives of the space, special sound attenuation was deployed on the air handlers to ensure the sound of the machinery didn’t disrupt the sacred space.

Virtual Construction: The sanctuary building was designed and modeled three-dimensionally because of the extreme complexity of the building.  Coordinates from the BIM model were used by a GPS surveying instrument to ensure that underground utilities, for example, did not end up running into a column.

The ribbon cutting for the Church of the Resurrection was held in April, 2017. According to Pastor Adam Hamilton, “Our hope is that 700 years from now, if there is still a community here, our church is at the center of it – that people are still walking in these doors and finding their lives changed.”

This program is worth 1 LU.