News & Insights

Salas O’Brien is excited to announce that it has been recognized by the Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute (CFSEI) with two honorable mentions at the organization’s Design Excellence Awards for the cold-formed steel (CFS) designs of the Colorado Convention Center Expansion and Denver International Airport (DIA) Concourse B & C Expansions, both in Denver, Colorado. The awards were presented during CFSEI’s annual expo and conference in Tucson, Arizona. CFSEI is a national organization comprised of structural engineers and other design professionals. Its annual Design Excellence Awards program recognizes outstanding achievement in creative design, technical innovation, and overall project excellence in the use of CFS, according to the CSFEI website.

Colorado Convention Center Expansion

Already one of the largest buildings in Denver, the rooftop expansion of the Colorado Convention Center added 135,000 square feet to this premier venue. The Salas O’Brien project team, led by Senior Principal Russ Leffler, PE, SE, and Vice President Daniel Stadig, PE, provided exterior structural CFS framing engineering and panelized exterior walls for the 20,000-square-foot outdoor rooftop terrace. They are up to 50 feet tall, including an eight-foot-tall parapet over a 40-foot-long clear span hanging from a new structure above the existing roof. They were also carefully designed to meet the tight restrictions of the construction schedule and downtown site location.

The team also provided interior CFS wall and ceiling framing engineering for the 80,000-square-foot column-free Bluebird Ballroom and 35,000-square-foot wrap-around pre-function concourse. These areas included challenging elements requiring extensive engineering, including large, sloped ceiling elements in the pre-function concourse area to match the blade roof and soffits that supported 30-foot span ceiling joists.

DIA Concourse B & C Expansions

In 2019, DIA undertook a large expansion project for two of its three concourses, increasing Concourses B and C by 126,000 square feet and 530,000 square feet, respectively. The Salas O’Brien project team, led by Senior Principal Russ Leffler, PE, SE, and Vice President Daniel Stadig, PE, undertook the challenge of designing various CFS and CFS/steel hybrid panels and incorporating the two systems into one panelization process. The hybrid panel design allowed the client to receive the steel members directly from the supplier for insertion into the panels and for panel construction to occur off-site due to space constraints at the project location.

The off-site fabrication component also had challenges, including coordinating the structural steel within the CFS panels to allow for reasonable panel sizes and execution and designing the panels with special structural considerations for loads incurred during transportation to and installation at the project site. Salas O’Brien’s expertise, combined with the firm’s extensive DIA project history, minimized the impact on airport operations and allowed for faster enclosure.

For more information, including all the 2024 CFSEI Design Excellence award winners, visit CSFEI’s website.