Bryan Elkhorn Campus: Architectural Panels Go Vertical in Omaha

Bryan Elkhorn Campus: Architectural Panels Go Vertical in Omaha

Project Underway | Omaha, Nebraska

Oline Construction is proud to be building the Bryan Elkhorn Campus, a two building medical office development for Goldenrod Companies at the southwest corner of 204th Street and West Center Road in Omaha. Building construction started this spring. This month the site changed overnight. The wall panels are going vertical.

We want to recognize Goldenrod Companies for the vision and commitment behind this campus. Goldenrod is developing the 14.6 acre outpatient site with Bryan Health as the anchor healthcare partner, and phase one will bring about 137,000 square feet of primary care, specialty physician practices, diagnostic imaging, urgent care and other outpatient services to the Elkhorn area in spring 2027. The design is by the Davis Design Group team of Omaha, with Alper Audi of St. Louis, one of the country’s most experienced structural engineers, engineering the tilt-up panels. A project of this quality starts with an owner and a design team willing to push for it.

 

A Medical Building, Delivered With Site Cast Panels

This is a medical office campus first. The delivery method is what makes it fast. Every exterior wall panel on both buildings was cast on site, a few feet from where it now stands. Panels were poured on the building floor slabs and on dedicated casting slabs laid out beside the buildings, so the crew could keep casting while the first panels were being set. That is the tilt-wall method, and one of the many delivery types that Oline excels at. Nothing is trucked in from a plant. The panels are formed, reinforced and poured on our schedule, then lifted into place by crane, set on their footings, braced and connected. A floor slab becomes an enclosed building in a matter of days.

These are not plain gray walls. Davis Design Group detailed the buildings as high end architectural concrete, and the finish is built into the panels rather than applied later. Brick pattern form liners are set in the forms before the pour, so the coursing, joints and texture of brick are cast directly into the face of each panel. Once the panels are up, the surfaces are power washed, then stained and painted so the brick reads as brick and the fluted accent bands carry their own color. Reveals, banding and formed articulation give the elevations depth and shadow. Parapets and building corners are detailed so the pattern carries cleanly from the street. Each panel is a finished piece of architecture the moment it leaves the casting bed.

 

 

Engineered to Stand, Engineered to Lift

An architectural panel has to work twice. It has to carry the building as a permanent structural wall, and it has to survive the few minutes when a crane lifts it off the slab by its face, the hardest load it will ever see. Alper Audi engineered every panel on both buildings as structure: the reinforcing, the panel to footing and panel to roof connections, and the openings, corner returns and parapet heights that change the picture panel by panel. Leviat engineered the lift and bracing side, locating the lifting and brace inserts and designing the rigging and brace layout for each panel so it comes off the slab, rotates and stands without cracking. The form liner texture and reveals add weight and change how each panel bends in the air, and both sets of engineering account for it.

That engineering is what lets a decorative wall also be the structure. There is no separate frame behind the brick pattern. The panel is the building.

 

 

 

Precision in the Casting Bed

Architectural panels reward preparation. Form liner modules are laid out to each panel. Seams are planned so the coursing carries across panel joints. Parapet terminations and corner returns are worked out on paper before they are worked out in concrete. The mockup panel was poured, walked and reviewed before the first production pour, because the care that goes into the casting bed is what the public sees on the face of the building for the next hundred years.

Aurum Construction is the concrete contractor on the project, forming, placing and finishing the panels and the slabs they were cast on. Mike Wolstenholme of Straight Up Consulting, a member of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association College of Fellows, provided panel technical consulting from casting through erection. Having that depth of experience on a job with this much architecture in the panels is not a luxury. It is how the finish comes out right the first time.

That discipline extends to the erection itself. Panel picks are sequenced building by building so the crane, the crews and the site logistics support each other rather than compete for the same ground. Clean footings, protected anchor bolts, and clear access for the next trade are part of the plan, not an afterthought.

 

 

Where the Project Stands

In the roughly four months since building construction began, the Oline team has:

• Completed site grading and the majority of underground utilities
• Placed foundations, building floor slabs and casting slabs
• Cast the full set of architectural panels for both buildings on site
• Started panel erection on both buildings

Structural steel follows directly behind the panels. Once the steel is in place, roofing, metal composite wall panels, and the aluminum storefront and curtainwall systems will close in both buildings ahead of the Nebraska winter, and interior work on the tenant spaces begins.

 

One Method Among Many

Bryan Elkhorn shows what Oline brings to any delivery method: early coordination with the design team, disciplined preparation before the work starts, decisive field leadership, and a site that is neat and clean every single day. Projects like this are won or lost long before the crane arrives.

Site cast concrete is one tool in the box. Oline builds across the vertical markets that shape a city: mixed use developments that stack retail, office and residential on one block, high rise office and residential towers with transfer floors and post tensioned decks, sports and entertainment venues rebuilt inside live stadiums against immovable game day deadlines, hospitality, healthcare, industrial and tenant improvement. We take on environmentally sensitive sites and difficult ground, with rock removal, blasting, ground improvement and deep foundations engineered before the first footing goes in. The method changes from project to project. The way we run the job does not.

We appreciate Goldenrod’s partnership, Davis Design Group’s work in detailing a building worth looking at, and Alper Audi’s engineering that makes it stand. We also recognize Aurum Construction, Leviat, Straight Up Consulting, and all of our trade partners and field teams, whose daily coordination and execution are what put two buildings in the air on schedule. Two medical office buildings, cast on site, going vertical as finished architecture. That is Oline at work.

 

 

 

Project Team

Owner and developer: Goldenrod Companies. Anchor healthcare partner: Bryan Health. Architect: Davis Design Group, Omaha. Structural engineer: Alper Audi, St. Louis. Lift and bracing design: Leviat US. Concrete: Aurum Construction. Panel technical consulting: Mike Wolstenholme, FTCA, Straight Up Consulting. General contractor: Oline Construction.