Late in the evening on Monday, May 30^th 2011, a fire completely destroyed the 91,000 SF building that served as the Lincoln Public Schools District Office since 1990.  The building was originally built in 1957 as the headquarters for State Farm Insurance.  The 20 million dollars in damage incurred was the most damage caused by any one fire in Lincoln’s history. Along with destroying mountains of irreplaceable paper records, the fire displaced around 250 employees.  While LPS was quick to attain temporary office space from the city of Lincoln, they knew it was vital to quickly find the most attractive permanent solution for their office needs.Hampton Construction was hired early on as the construction manager and the first step they took was to call their local precaster to begin discussing budgets and schedules for the entire building.  Precast was selected almost immediately for the project as it is naturally fire resistant and could also meet the demanding schedule the project required.  The owners also needed to develop the area to raise additional capital necessary for the replacement building.  Precast lent itself to this aspect of the office design because the aesthetics of the office were required to blend with the other buildings in the development. This necessitated the construction to be of top quality materials to help attract the high end grocer and retailers desired.  The designers needed to go vertically to free up space for additional parking and also make room for the rest of the development.  They decided upon roughly 94,000 SF to be spread out on three floors. As an added bonus, the use of precast aided in the affordability of the project so the owners were actually able to add additional scope of work in the form of about 14,000 SF of basement to be used for mechanical operations and general storage.  Precast was not only utilized for the building envelope but  also for the structural members, flooring system,  roof, penthouse, elevator and stair towers along with the stairs themselves.

Overall, around 1,112 pieces of precast were integrated to create the total precast structure.  The schedule was so aggressive that the precaster teamed up with another precaster to insure the timelines were met.  Just over a year after ground breaking, the building was handed over to the owners. The building came in under budget and on time allowing the school district personnel to have a happy and smooth homecoming.

Concrete Industries, a NEBCO, Inc. company, supplied the structural and exterior precast products for the build.  Designed by Sinclair Hille Architects.