Exterior Shell of Raleigh’s New City Hall

The week before last, members of our team had the opportunity to visit Gate Precast Concrete in Nashville, Tennessee. Gate Precast Concrete is the company making the precast concrete panels that will be the exterior shell for the new City Hall. What does precast mean? Precast is a concrete product that is created offsite then delivered to its project destination for final use

These panels are enormous, and each takes 24 hours to fabricate. They are very labor intensive. The only part of the process that is automated is the concrete mix. Here is a short video that shows part of the process.

Raleigh City Hall Construction - Panel Fabrication

For each panel type, a wood form is built, and concrete is poured into it. A team levels and smooths the concrete, and the panel is left to cure. The night shift then removes the form from the panel, marks the panel with a special number, and places it in a holding area to finish the curing process before it is shipped to Raleigh. The numbers on and attached to each panel will tell the contractor where on the building that panel is to go.

Once the project is ready to begin exterior shell installation, Gate Precast Concrete will load a semi-truck with panels and drive to Raleigh, about an eight-hour drive. From there, the panels go to a holding area, where another team places the glass in the frame and prepares each panel for installation.

When will we start to see these panels placed on the building? Well, the team is still working on the underground part of the new City Hall, but in the coming months, we will start to see the first-floor construction process. As each floor gets built, the panels will be placed on the building. So, short answer: We will see the first signs of the outside of our City Hall in the near future.