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Pentagon Shifts Into Higher Gear

(designbuildmag.com- 10/15/01)

By Victoria L. Tanner

	Courtesy of DOD

As program manager for the Pentagon's ongoing $1.2-billion renovation, W. Lee Evey has spent the last four years as the "go-to guy," resolving the inevitable challenges in attempting to maintain the nation's largest office building.

Riding herd on the huge, 20-year program, Evey has earned widespread respect for navigating a massive bureaucracy, solving problems and putting out fires as he manages a monumental construction effort. Since 1997, Evey and his team have soldiered on with little fanfare, resolutely working to restore the outdated structure without disrupting the work of the small city of some 23,000 military and civilian personnel who populate the building.

Early last month, with the Labor Day holiday behind them, Evey's team was sailing toward major milestones in the project's life. Wedge One, the first above-ground portion of the building to be renovated, was nearly complete. And just days before, Evey had capped off a nearly two-year effort to award the contract for the next phase of the project.

After spearheading a dramatic shift in the Pentagon's procurement methods, Evey was prepared to ink a contract with Hensel Phelps Construction Co., Denver, that would deliver the rest of the project on a design-build basis. Confident that the process would ensure a more effective and efficient approach to completing the next four phases of the work, Evey had even begun making plans to retire by the start of 2002.

All changed on 9.11

Last month, in the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 11, ironically the 60th anniversary of the Pentagon's original groundbreaking, Evey had set out on a long drive, temporarily putting his work aside. When terrorist hijackers rammed a fully-fueled Boeing 757 into his place of business—killing all 64 people on board and another 125 in the building—Evey was driving south across the Appalachian Mountains, already on a sad journey to attend his brother-in-law's funeral. Having driven for hours without his radio or cell phone turned on, Evey learned of the tragedy from a waitress at a fast food restaurant in Bristol TN, where he had stopped for lunch.

"I went to the counter and the people there said 'Sorry it took us so long to come out and serve you, but we were watching all the terrible events on TV,' and they told me about New York," Evey says. "And then they said 'Another plane was hijacked and flew into the Pentagon.' They didn't even get the end of the word out and I was already sprinting across the parking lot to go back."

	Structural enhancements added during the renovation helped to delay the collapse of the Pentagon's roof. The upgrades enabled many in the sector to survive, although 125 did not. Courtesy of DOD

Shocking first sights

As he raced homeward, Evey spent the next six hours on his cell phone trying to direct his onsite renovation team as they worked to support the emergency response effort. Driving nonstop, he had seen none of the horrific images being broadcast worldwide and was unprepared for what lay ahead.

"There was a pall of smoke over the area as you came up," he recalls. As he approached the Pentagon from the highway, "it was a shock to see it," he says.

The terrorist attack on the building made a direct hit on the Pentagon's southwest side, "Wedge One." Ironically, the chevron-shaped wedge—the very first part of the building finished in 1941-42—was just weeks away from the completion of a multiyear, $258-million, slab-to-slab renovation.

Led by Evey's Pentagon Renovation (PENREN) team, the effort involved some 200 government personnel, supported by an 80-person program management joint venture team of Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall (DMJM), Los Angeles, and 3D/I, Houston. On Sept. 11, the Wedge One project's general contractor, AMEC, New York City, and its squad of subcontractors were in the last days of punchlist work, providing assistance as the PENREN team finished moving personnel out of the building's Wedge Two area and into the new facility.

In all, the five-story Pentagon encompasses more than 6.6 million sq ft of floor space—roughly three times the size of the Empire State Building and double that of Chicago's Merchandise Mart. Situated on a 29-acre site on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, the building is a stone's throw from Ronald Reagan National Airport and just minutes from downtown Washington DC. The building's five wedges, each totaling more than 1 million sq ft and each housing some 5,000 personnel, consist of offices, meeting rooms and other special-use areas.

Offices line a concentric series of five rings that are identified by letters. "A Ring" is the innermost and defines an internal five-acre courtyard. Rings B through E emanate from the "A Ring." Ten corridors radiate out from the building's hub, intersecting the ring corridors which wrap the building's circumference. The interconnecting corridors measure 17.5 miles. Despite its size, the spoked design allows surprisingly easy point-to-point internal travel.

Best laid plans...

Since the Pentagon has been officially designated a national historic landmark, its limestone exterior had been preserved through repair and repointing, but had been unaltered in the renovation.

Internally, the Wedge One project included: complete demolition of existing facilities; significant abatement of hazardous materials (most notably, 28 million lbs. of asbestos-contaminated material was removed); installation of all new electrical, mechanical, plumbing and telecommunication systems within the existing floorplan; structural steel reinforcement; and replacement of all 1,282 windows in the section, including 386 blast-resistant units on the outermost "E Ring" and innermost "A Ring" of the building. All-new office space was created with an open space plan aimed at enhancing flexibility.

After nearly four years of painstaking deconstruction and then rebuilding Wedge One, PENREN team members onsite were aghast at the destruction wrought within a few seconds last month.

Much of their work in Wedge One was demolished when the hijacked plane slammed into the first and second floor levels, adjacent to Corridor Four. The impact and subsequent fire caused significant damage in both Wedge One and Wedge Two. Amazingly, the plane pushed through the outermost "E Ring", and drove deep into the interior, its nose coming to rest just inside the "C Ring." Other areas within the wedges suffered significant smoke and water damage, but the outermost reaches were largely spared.

While the building sustained obvious structural damage where the floors above the Wedge One impact site collapsed, Pentagon officials at press time said it was still too early to determine the extent of further structural damage. Days after the crash, PENREN hired KCE Structural Engineers, P.C., Washington DC, to conduct a full structural analysis before repair work commences. Beyond property damage, though, was the immediate and far greater concern for the safety and security of the Pentagon personnel and all others on the site.

Eyewitness accounts

On the morning of Sept. 11, Les Hunkele, DMJM's program manager for the PENREN team, was in his office in a jobsite trailer in the Pentagon's north parking lot on the opposite side of the building from the crash site. Even from a distance of several hundred yards, the enormity of the impact made him immediately aware that something had gone horribly wrong.

"I was about to leave my office for a meeting and the walls in my office shook," he says. "Occasionally you hear some artillery at Arlington National Cemetery for a funeral, but this was definitely louder. I looked out the window and could see a black cloud."

William Powers, a 3 D/I vice president, also was in his onsite office at the time. "You could hear it and feel it. I already knew about the first plane in the World Trade Center, but I think I was in denial. When I first heard it, I told someone: ÔIt can't be what I think it is,' but it was instantaneous," Powers says. "I knew before I even went outside that something had happened to the building."

Hunkele and Powers began an almost immediate evacuation of the personnel in their offices and began the agonizing process of trying to account for all of the PENREN team members and construction personnel who may have been on the site. Given the immediate danger of fire, the subsequent collapse and the inevitable confusion, the effort to locate people across the 29-acre site was frantic and difficult.

"Once the plane hit, the first thing you think about is your people," says Powers. "Most of that day, quite literally, was focused on finding where everybody was. It's a huge complex. The second thing, which went into the next days, was trying to secure the building to make sure it was stable."

Narrow escapes

Depending upon their location in the building at the time of impact, PENREN team members experienced the incident differently. Evey points with pride to the heroic efforts of some of his personnel who were in Wedge One at the time of the crash. "They crawled through the offices on their hands and knees through choking, black smoke to get everybody out that they could find," he says.

While incredibly no members of the PENREN program, or their construction personnel, were killed or injured, there were some exceedingly close calls.

"Where the plane came in was really at the construction entrance," says Jack Singleton, president of Singleton Electric Co. Inc., Gaithersburg MD, the Wedge One electrical subcontractor. "The plane's left wing actually came in near the ground and the right wing was tilted up in the air. That right wing went directly over our trailer, so if that wing had not tilted up, it would have hit the trailer. My foreman, Mickey Bell, had just walked out of the trailer and was walking toward the construction entrance."

Singleton says Bell's memory of the event is still somewhat clouded. "All that he remembers is that he heard a loud noise. He thought it was a helicopter coming in to the heliport behind him. The next thing he remembers is picking himself up off the ground and seeing the fire and the explosions in front of him," adds Singleton. "He has no idea how long he was knocked out, but we figure it had to be at least a few minutes. My guess is that he was in shock, because when he got up, he just got right into his pick-up truck next to the trailer and drove immediately out through the gates."

After Bell made his way back to Singleton's suburban offices, the narrow margin of his escape became even more evident. "We went out to look at his truck and the truckbed was filled with all kinds of debris that must have come from the blast. He's one really lucky guy," marvels Singleton.

	At an onsite press conference, Pentagon renovation program manager Lee Evey details damage caused by Sept. 11 attack. Courtesy of DOD

Beyond luck

For one employee with Wedge One's mechanical subcontractor John J. Kirlin Inc., Rockville MD, "lucky" is an understatement. "We had one guy who was standing, looking out the window and saw the plane when it was coming in. He was in front of one of the blast-resistant windows," says Kirlin President Wayne T. Day, who believes the window structure saved the man's life.

According to Matt Hahr, Kirlin's senior project manager at the Pentagon, the employee "was thrown about 80 ft down the hall through the air. As he was traveling through the air, he says the ceiling was coming down from the concussion. He got thrown into a closet, the door slammed shut and the fireball went past him," recounts Hahr. "Jet fuel was on him and it irritated his eyes, but he didn't get burned. Then the fireball blew over and the sprinklers came on, and he was able to crawl out of the closet and get out of the building through the courtyard."

Adds Day, "But for the grace of God and two feet to the left or right, some of these people wouldn't be here now. For those of us that were not at the site, I don't think we can truly understand the magnitude of the fear at that moment," he claims. "We had people there who were really tough, hard-nosed guys. Emotionally, this just broke them up. They all got out healthy and intact, but it was a frightening experience—they were seconds away from death."

Although Pentagon officials moved to evacuate the site immediately, key members of the PENREN team stayed in position. "Once we found out our folks were all right, our immediate focus was to support those whose responsibility it was to take care of the situation," says Hunkele.

"I'm not a firefighter but I knew we could assist them," he explains. "We kept a few folks here, because we knew that we had information that could help. Luckily, our CADD operator was onsite and within two hours, we had site plans for the building printed out. We knew the floor plans could help the firemen figure out what they were looking at."

At their disposal

Floor plans were just the start of what they would be called on to provide rescue workers, FBI investigators and other emergency personnel. "We had the intimate knowledge of the building and everything that had just been done to Wedge One, as well as the moveout that was occurring in Wedge Two," says AMEC vice president Lee Benish. "Because we were still onsite, we had people immediately available and were already mobilized to be able to respond in support of the search and rescue effort."

The entire PENREN team—government employees, DMJM, 3 D/I, AMEC and their subcontractors—kicked into action. "We did whatever was necessary to facilitate the quickest possible resolution in trying to find survivors," says Hunkele. "As fast as things were moving, we tried to outthink the problem and anticipate what was going to be needed."

Adds Evey, "We started staging everything we could think that they might want over at our PENREN compound on the north end of the parking lot. When someone at the crash site would say, ÔWe need to shore up this area where a column has been damaged and we need 4x4 timbers,' we'd call over to the site and the timbers were delivered five minutes later."

The goal, he explains, was "to provide the [rescuers] on the site with one-stop shopping. I think we did a pretty darn good job of doing that."

Just as the nation would witness an outpouring of unprecedented generosity in the days following the tragedy, Evey says that help came from all quarters. "If anything, there was an embarrassment of riches from the contractors," Evey says. "We had equipment, we had materials, we had people. The next morning (Sept. 12), we had over 200 here ready to support us."

Offers of help poured in from across the region, Hunkele says—not only from PENREN's existing construction team, as well as their newly minted design-build team—but even from major firms which, only days earlier, had received the word that they had not been selected to handle the future work. "The contracting community really stepped up to the plate," Hunkele says. "Everything we asked for, they did. And we asked for a lot."

Fueled by both adrenaline and a palpable need to help, workers, many of whom had left the burning building only hours before, now came back. "Mickey led our team back down to the job to light the site up that night," says Singleton. "We were there Ô24/7', doing whatever they needed."

Mitigated mayhem

As grim as the situation was, Evey and other members of his team soon realized that but for a fateful combination of timing, location and construction expertise, the damage to the Pentagon could have been much worse—and the loss of life much higher.

Many of the structural enhancements made before Sept. 11—most notably, the structural steel reinforcement, the blast resistant windows and Kevlar inserts between the windows which trapped much debris—were all critically important in both saving lives and limiting damage, Evey contends.

"The building performed magnificently," he says. "Fortunately, we seem to have made some good decisions and we're very happy about that. It's unfortunate that the bad things that happened did happen, but it probably could have been a lot worse."

Evey says his computer is "filled these days with e-mails, unsolicited testimonials from people who survived, I honestly believe, because of things we did in the design and decisions we made during the construction. Of course, that's very gratifying," he adds.

Even so, all the team members recognize that there are many lessons to be learned. Indeed, PENREN has "already undertaken a very extensive process of trying to contact everyone that we can identify who was in the area when the incident occurred," Evey explains. The goal? "To learn what worked right and what didn't work right so that we can improve even further the design of the building."

Already, Evey can point to some positives. "I can't say that we ever anticipated the collapse of an area, but I will say that it did what we hoped it would do, which is protect people in the building in case of a blast event," he says. "The whole thing had been designed anticipating a blast event from the outside-in, and as it turned out, it was was kind of from the inside-out. But in fact, it still performed its function."

Changed missions

The PENREN team was equally adept at handling its varied functions. What had been a highly complex construction project to begin with was transformed in a matter of moments into a recovery, reconstruction and renovation effort, which must now move forward even as the building's occupants move into war-time mode and security ratchets even higher.

Powers says that while much about the job has changed, alterations to plans and specs are only a small part of the big picture. "In reality, the world changed—not only because of the damage to the building, but the mission of the occupants of the building is going to be changing."

It's a shift they could never have imagined, Evey concedes, but one they are ready to handle. Within days of the blast, his team had issued a new contract to AMEC to handle repair and reconstruction on Wedge One and to prepare Wedge Two to be turned over to the Hensel-Phelps team to launch the design-build phases of the remaining renovation program, which is still scheduled for completion in 2012.

Even though the overall program has been indelibly altered, Evey says the changed conditions have not shaken his faith in his earlier decision to switch to design-build project delivery for the final phases.

"Things happen all over the world that organizations in the Pentagon have to respond to immediately," he says. "We know that it's a constantly changing environment, so we were looking for those kinds of characteristics in the contractor we would select—that they would be able to be flexible, quick on their feet, able to respond to rapidly changing situations."

Of course, Evey adds, "Never in our wildest dreams did we think that the contractor would have to be as flexible, as creative, as innovative and as focused as they're going to have to be now. But the fact is they are," Evey says, matter-of-factly. "They've got those characteristics and I see no reason whatsoever to rethink, reconsider, change or have less faith in the design-build process because of what has happened here."

What has changed, however, is Evey's plan to retire. Charged with a daunting new challenge, he now intends to stay at the PENREN helm indefinitely as his team rebuilds. And his determination to focus on the future extends to his insistence on renaming the site of the crash.

In PENREN parlance, the area is now known as "the Phoenix." And like that mythical bird, Evey and his team are determined that their landmark building will rise again from the ashes, emerging stronger for all that it has had to endure and survived.

Hunkele is program manager of the DMJM-3D/I joint venture supporting the Pentagon Renovation office. Here, he recounts Sept. 11.

We were just getting ready for a meeting when we felt the plane hit the Pentagon. At first, the emergency personnel didnÕt realize that we could play a critical role in the recovery effort and we were all told to go home. But PENREN had contracting authority, access to all the necessary heavy equipment and A/E expertise right there and ready to roll. In most cases, time is money.

In this case, time meant lives. We immediately set up an operations center to support the FBI, the fire department—all of the rescue personnel.

From cranes and backhoes to forklifts, structural steel and respirators, the PENREN team quickly ramped up. We tried to outthink the problem as fast as it was moving. I've worked a couple of disasters before and I kept trying to think, "What's next? What are they going to need to do their job?"

Anticipating the rescuers

Even though it was a sunny afternoon, for example, we knew that we'd need lights and generators pretty soon. So we hit the phones and had everything we needed to run a night site on standby. So, when the rescue team asked for it, it was already in place or on the way. And that became our modus operandi: "What do we think that they're going to ask for next and how can we get it here before they need it?"

One PENREN team member who answered that question was Planning and Tenant Relations Group Leader Stacie Condrell. She instantly understood the peril faced by the FBI, firefighters, and emergency rescue people. Few of them knew the building they were entering and the areas were dark and shrouded with smoke. So her group was able to provide architectural drawings within two hours and an off-site printing shop worked around the clock to make plans available as needed.

PENREN also was able to respond by virtue of its contracting capability. Senior Construction Scheduler Ed Pickens provided brand new dumpsters right away. They needed sparkling clean dumpsters because the debris was evidence. Ed told them that we were going to have to build a road for the trucks since the ground around the heliport [the area closest to the blast] was too soft. The FBI agent just said, "Do it."

So, Ed called a contractor who got the gravel and got moving. Then he discovered that the deliveries were moving too slowly because of security. So we had FBI agents ride in the trucks to expedite delivery. Within two hours, we had built a road.

It meant a lot to us to be able to provide the rescue teams and investigators with a comprehensive construction and A/E arm. In fact, an FBI agent told me afterwards that our support had turned a six-week effort into a two-week effort. So, we undoubtedly helped them save time—and, we hope, lives.