Bringing thousands of employees in the North Texas area together, Liberty Mutual Insurance recently completed a new regional hub in Plano's Legacy West. The nearly 1 million square-feet space brings employees from Frisco, Irving, Richardson, and along the Dallas North Tollway to the new campus.

While working closely with Liberty Mutual, the real estate developer KDC and architect Omniplan, the design and budget was still underway when Balfour Beatty Construction was awarded as the General Contractor. Assisting Balfour Beatty with design and budget development, building enclosure contractor IWR North America was awarded two subcontracts for the enclosure: core and shell, and tenant improvements.

IWR designed, engineered, fabricated and installed a 30,000 square-feet of aluminum composite panel system with a fire-retardant core and custom color. The panel system is located at the community center, garage canopies, exterior walls, interior stairwells and main lobby soffits. This part of the project involved complex geometry and the schedule did not allow for field measuring before fabrication, which is typical and desired with this type of system. ACM panel joint alignment was critical to the architect as well as the finished product in these high-end, high-traffic areas. Success of this component was not possible without efforts by the ACM fabricator Elward Systems, based out of Denver.

The parking garage was partially enclosed with 54,000 square-feet of a custom designed, engineered and fabricated stainless steel woven mesh utilizing a concealed tensioning attachment system. The substructure steel, which the tensioned mesh system attached to, was fully-coordinated, designed and installed by IWR in partnership with manufacturer WS Tyler. The tolerance for the steel support to align with tensioned mesh was only a maximum of 1/16 inches, lining up over multiple floors. On the first floor of the parking garage, 4,000 square-feet of custom designed, framed-stainless steel mesh security screens and doors and 10,000 square-feet of headlight screens were installed. The headlight screens were custom designed, engineered and fabricated by IWR. These support systems for headlight screens mount to the vehicular cable barriers in the parking garage.

Two penthouses on each tower roof, the community center roof monitors, garage soffits as well as wall areas added 19,000 square-feet of concealed fastener metal panel system in a custom color. Also, 9,000 square-feet of rainscreen louvers, fabricated by Construction Specialties, in a custom color and louver screen were installed by IWR.

Multiple visual mock-ups, more than 100 document revisions and clarifications were issued, as well as more than 1,600 requests for information were tracked and managed to ensure all changes through the design development were captured and ultimately executed. Throughout the seven-month, fast-tracked project schedule, IWR managed more than 50 field workers during the peak installation time.

Amenities on the new campus include a parking garage with 4,500 spaces, an on-site medical center that offers a physical therapy services area, two conference centers, a full-service cafeteria, a gourmet coffee bar and two rooftop gardens. The insurance company owns an adjacent four-acre tract in Legacy West that is earmarked for future expansion.