Austin, Texas, May 5, 2008 – Early on a recent Sunday morning in downtown Austin an aerial ballet of flying steel was staged on a barricaded stretch of Colorado Street adjacent to the Chase Building, 221 West Sixth Street. This unusual ballet featured an impressive array of props, a gritty crew of ironworkers, and a supporting cast under the direction of local general contractor SpawMaxwell.

This particular dance in construction parlance is called a “steel pick.” Patriot Erectors, Inc. of Kyle provided the choreography. The main prop: a 360 ton “crawler” crane with a reach of 335 linear feet stacked with 75 tons of steel plates as a counter balance. The crane operator’s target for the 11 “picks” was a four foot opening at the 17th level of the Chase Building where two windows had been removed – one for safety reasons – and the other to accept the steel beams that will support an internal staircase in an office between levels 16 & 17.   

The Austin office of Gensler served as project architects with Walter P. Moore providing the structural engineering for the complex project. 

The intense planning and coordination of a production of this magnitude paid off in near flawless execution (a temper mental crane slowed the dance by about 3 hours) for SpawMaxwell Superintendent David Perez, who is running the 33,000 square foot office build-out for client RGM Advisors, LLC, a proprietary trading firm that applies scientific methods and computing power to trading financial instruments around the world. In addition to securing the area, Perez briefed the fire department, police, building security, and hired a project safety auditor. Nothing was left to chance.