UAA's new engineering & industry building: part 1 educating students and serving Alaska's industry stakeholders.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Architects & Engineers - University of Alaska Anchorage - Column

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As I walk into the strong-floor room located on the ground floor of the new University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Engineering and Industry building, it is bustling; workers are installing caution markings on either side of a safety door, one of two that divides an enormous two-story engineering lab into three spaces: a student activities area, a Civil Engineering materials lab, and the strong-floor lab.

Dr. Andrew Metzger, UAA associate professor and lab manager, tells me that the new approximately $50 million building was first occupied July 2015. "There's already been a flurry of activity because there's such a demand for testing large specimens," Metzger explains.

The space is certainly busy: Dr. Scott Hamel, UAA assistant professor, and UAA alumnus Nathaniel Cox are working on wiring issues on a 20,000 pound jack to be utilized in a test as finishing touches are still being put on the lab itself. The sense of urgency actually precluded the building opening. Hamel echoes Metzger's sentiment: "The building opened in July and the first tests were in August, so there's a real pentup demand. The contractors were still here, and they occupied [the lab's office], and so we were fighting for space with the people building the building around us," he laughs.

Alaska First

This demand stems in part from the fact that this facility is the first of its kind constructed in Alaska. Framing the strong-floor are steel columns that form a support frame manufactured by Anchorage steel manufacturer STEELFAB. Metzger says that the floor (three feet thick and steel-reinforced on top and bottom) and frame can support a downward, or compressive, force of up to 1.2 million pounds and an upward, or tension, force of about 770,000 pounds. The steel columns are about 17.5 feet tall, allowing testing of specimens 15 feet tall by 20 feet long "without doing anything extraordinary."

Metzger says, "Prior to this building opening, companies that wanted to do this kind of testing had to send it out of state. One example is an oil industry company that wanted to test a steel assembly that weighed about 8,000 pounds, and they had to ship it all the way to Ohio to test it." In another instance, a company had to send a steel rod to Seattle to test its capacity.

Aside from saving the time and monetary costs of shipping, testing at UAA allows manufacturers to observe the tests themselves, if they choose. "There's something to be said for when they can...