Case Study: General Services Administration achieves continuous-operation seismic resilience with Thornton Tomasetti's retrofit design

General Services Administration retrofits 1 million ft² federal building with Thornton Tomasetti

The General Services Administration faced the challenge of seismically retrofitting the historic Robert A. Young Federal Building, which housed 38 agencies and 3,000 employees, while ensuring these vital operations could continue uninterrupted during the renovation. Thornton Tomasetti was engaged to provide structural design services for this performance-based seismic retrofit.

Thornton Tomasetti employed advanced finite element analysis to design a solution using 192 fluid viscous dampers on the lower floors and rigid steel braces on the upper floors. This innovative approach created minimal disruption during installation and resulted in a design that far exceeds prescriptive code requirements, ensuring the building's stability near major fault lines. The chosen method successfully avoided the need for costly temporary relocation of the building's tenants.

General Services Administration