Originally designed as a 3-story building, with a fourth floor expansion planned in the future, this modern structure had a price tag of $2.7 million. Partnering with the fabricator/erector to deliver the steel structure of the building, Ruby+Associates applied value engineering principals and completely redesigned the structural steel component of the building. This redesign saved enough money to enable LCC to construct the fourth floor and still bring the project in several hundred thousand dollars under budget.

The Ruby redesign eliminated over 700 members, beams and braces, as well as 11,000 shear studs from the floor system, eliminated cantilever perimeter framing, substituted steel columns for concrete-filled columns and moved to a completely field bolted structure. The resulting floor system (including a thicker slab) added minimal dead load to the structure, but increased the strength of the composite floor system. This redesigned structure was easier to build, stiffer and much more efficient – the number of floor beams were reduced by 78 percent and over 300 tons of structural steel were eliminated! Based on AISC calculations, this amounts to a savings of over 280 tons of CO2.