Brief
LIFTbuild, a technology and construction services provider, has developed a novel floor-lifting technology that has significantly expedited the construction process for the Exchange building in Greektown, Detroit. Learn how this technology operates through an integrated fabrication system that reduces timelines and improves worker safety.
Insight
LIFTbuild, a technology and construction services provider, has developed a novel floor-lifting technology that can turn construction sites into fabrication factories.
In collaboration with the Dearborn, Michigan-based architecture firm Ghafari Associates, LIFTbuild has developed a system that stands to reduce timelines and improve worker safety.
The technology operates through an integrated fabrication system that allows the company to sequence work around the structural cores while coordinating with material suppliers to create unitized assemblies for everything from building walls to its mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.
Each component is installed per floor when ready, with the assembly team lifting them six to eight feet to install mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems before using a jacking system to lift and lock each fully enclosed and weathertight floor into place.
LIFTbuild’s technology has been applied to the Exchange building in Greektown, Detroit, which has a top-heavy design that required the building to be assembled on the ground before being hoisted into place. The result is a 207-foot-tall building that has been realized at a rapid pace.
Work began in April 2022 and is slated to be completed in June 2023. The LIFTbuild system allows the company to continually use the building footprint, effectively creating more space on tight sites. LIFTbuild claims that its reimagined use of the construction site as a prefabrication space has significantly expedited the construction process relative to typical American methods for multistory projects, and because most of the hands-on construction takes place on the ground, the risk of on-site accidents is drastically reduced.
With virtually zero height limits, the methods developed by LIFTbuild could be employed on a wide range of building types, even to address the urgent American housing shortage, which experts suggest can be alleviated by the construction of between two and six million living units across the nation.
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