Jubilee Place Exoskeleton
- Category
- Building and Construction
- Location
- Bowen Hills, QLD
- Client
- Building Contractor
- Completed
- 2022
The brief
A first-of-its-kind steel exoskeleton, hung over a 133-year-old hotel
Jubilee Place is a $113 million, 15-level commercial building in Bowen Hills, part of the rejuvenation of Brisbane's King Street precinct. Its cantilevered design fuses the heritage-listed Jubilee Hotel into the building, with a geometric exoskeleton of bespoke prefabricated steel members hanging over it. Strict weight limits protect the Clem 7 tunnel below, and the exoskeleton leaves only four internal columns on each level.
A structure like this had never been built in Australia. If the steel went in late or in the wrong place, the cost in time and money would have been significant, and every other trade was waiting on it. The client needed certainty that the assembly was exactly where the designers placed it, from the first member to the last.
How we did it
A survey method designed for this structure
No standard method existed for an exoskeleton like this, so we developed one that was highly accurate, practical on a live site and cost effective to run. It had two parts, and we chose between them depending on the situation.
Total station observations from the ground
Terrestrial total station observations were taken from the ground to defined points on the structure, checking the position of each element as it was assembled.
Laser scanning for complex steel
The members and nodes were manufactured locally in Brisbane, then assembled in real time on site. Where the geometry was too complex for point observations, 3D laser scanning captured the steel in full and compared it against the design.
Experienced surveyors, three years on site
From 2019 to 2022, surveyors with more than 20 years of high-level construction experience checked the structure as it progressed. They gave the construction team quality feedback while it could still make a difference.
The outcomes
- 133 years
- Heritage Hotel
- 4
- Internal columns per level
- 3 years
- Project duration
- 100s
- Hours of rework avoided
The Jubilee Hotel, which needed to be carefully worked around
Exoskeleton carries the structure with minimal internal support
Surveyors with 20+ years of construction experience, 2019 to 2022
Building position confirmed within millimetres of design
Stakeholders progressed the build with confidence, knowing the true position of the building was within millimetres of its design location. The structure reached final completion without delay, saving many hundreds of man-hours in rework.
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