Wilshire Grand

Previously the site of the 16-story Wilshire Grand Hotel, this structure was developed by Korean Air into what is now the tallest building west of the Mississippi. At 73 stories, Wilshire Grand Center features five levels of underground parking, convention space, office suites, and a 900-room hotel. This groundbreaking project was one of the most talked about in Southern California and infused over a billion dollars into the Los Angeles economy. The Wilshire Grand redevelopment set a Guinness World Record for world’s largest quantity of concrete continuously placed for a future high-rise building. Dubbed the “Grand Pour,” this engineering feat lasted for 20 hours, with almost 2,000 truckloads and 84 million pounds of concrete brought in to lay the 21,200 cubic yards of concrete foundation.

Twining was on-site during the Grand Pour to sample and test over 1,000 concrete cylinders. We had more inspectors on-site for a single project at one time than any other project in company history. Twining provided comprehensive materials testing and inspection services throughout the remainder of the project as well. Over the 20-month construction schedule, Twining’s lead inspector worked with the project manager and maintained constant communication in order to maximize inspector efficiency. We provided testing and inspection of structural steel, both in the field as well as shop fabrication, core wall construction, QC/batch plant inspection, curtain wall/window testing, spray applied fireproofing, and materials testing services.

During the course of this project, Twining carried out a multitude of specialty engineering and testing projects:

• Field electroslag welding qualification and monitoring
• Creep testing for 73-story core walls
• Temperature monitoring using remote data capture for temperatures in concrete and for ambient weather conditions
• Special mockup testing to enable accelerated “jumping” of EFCO formwork system.