TThe frame of the hotel tower rose majestically near the heart of Philadelphia, but trouble was brewing.
It started after the podium of the building was done starting on or after the ninth floor. Some slabs in the 51-story tower planned to be the dual-branded W and Element Hotel contained deviations large enough to pose a problem for the owner and subcontractor of the window wall. Elevation variations plus rebar in unexpected places created anchorage problems at the slab edges that slowed the installation of the window wall until it was well behind schedule.
As problems became apparent in 2016 and 2017, faulty slabs threatened costly delays in closing the tower’s floors. A Pennsylvania state court judge ruled in October that Tutor Perini Building Co. breached its contract with the landlord, Chestlen Development, and was “intentionally obscuring and withholding critical information from Chestlen about the true cause and extent of the land’s problems.”
The contractor, facing a $155 million claim from the developer, is now seeking tens of millions of dollars from its main subcontractor for the building’s frame, Thomas P. Carney Inc. That company began tilting the floor slabs to prevent excessive deflection, according to court records reviewed by ENR. But according to the deposition testimony of its chairman, Bob Carney, the company did so under stressful and confused circumstances and failed to record what was done.
The overall result for the project team was a building that received its certificate of occupancy three years later, in 2021, with an envelope of nearly 30 claims or liens involving the owner, general contractor, key subcontractors, architect, engineer of record and two sureties. As Philadelphia County Commons Court Judge James Crumlish III next month begins considering damage assessments, one big question remains: How could crucial aspects of the slab walls and windows in what is said to be the city’s largest concrete-framed high-rise become uncoordinated?
In a familiar pattern from countless previous construction projects gone wrong, the owner and designers on one side and the contractors on the other are still pointing out who should have been responsible for the chamber plans and slab edge details.
While the The judge slammed Tutor Perini for its work and actions on the estimated $280 million project, also ruling that Carney breached his contract with Tutor Perini and was ultimately responsible.
Tutor Perini officials could not be reached for comment on the case, but the company has argued that poor design work was behind the problem and that the developer took undue advantage of the situation by withholding payments. Guardian Perini also blames Carney for breach of contract.
The Langhorne, Pa.-based subcontractor is pursuing its own separate civil lawsuits against Chestlen, related entities, project architect Cope Linder Architects (now known as Nelson Worldwide) and Philadelphia, Pa.-based structural engineer of record, O’Donnell and Naccarato. Claims and seizures are consolidated in a single case. Carney says in a statement that “he executed this project with a team of highly qualified professionals who met all contractual requirements and quality control standards. We stand by the qualification and dedication of our team.”
A page from a report prepared for Chestlen Development by the owner’s forensic consultant HKA shows one of the facade and window problems related to concrete slab defects. The report claims to have documented $155 million in damages, including liquidated damages of $35,000 per day for more than 1,000 days.
As of 2015, Tutor Perini was working under a guaranteed maximum price contract that required substantial completion in 1,017 days with liquidated damages of $35,000 per day.
In the early stages, project work progressed normally. Carney framed the building’s podium and, in an early phase of the work, completed a record-breaking slab placement with the larger continuous discharge in the history of Philadelphia. The company presents specific work on the project, performed under a contract valued at about $31 million, on its website.
A tangle of about 30 lawsuits resulted from disputes over the construction of the 52-story W/Element Hotels in Philadelphia..
Photo: TastyPoutine under CC 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
But the seeds of trouble may have been planted early in the play.
During a lengthy deposition in 2023, Chestlen’s attorney probed Bob Carney about the commitment he allegedly made to use a more experienced high-rise concrete construction contractor to prepare shoring plans. Carney said simply that the other contractor, while once interested in participating, ultimately “didn’t want to do it.”
When another engineering firm was hired to prepare the shoring and staking plans, according to Crumlish, the plans called for two sets of formwork to be used on the project” on a “four-day cycle for the floor-to-floor pouring” of slabs.
Problems at the top of the structure became apparent when Chicago-based Ventana, an experienced national window wall contractor, arrived on site. Rebars were discovered at the edges of the slab where anchors needed to be drilled. Elevation variations made it impossible to build windows that fit perfectly and function properly. window he brought in a consultant who found many problems with the slabs.
Tutor Perini hired his own consultant, who told the contractor that Carney was not using the designed forms and relocation system created for the project, according to Crumlish’s narrative of events.
Contractors had placed rebar forgings in edge positions that prevented Ventana from doing its job without changing the design, requiring more aluminum and additional anchor bolts.
Even after the concrete problems became known, Tutor Perini and Carney continued to place floor slabs that did not follow the shoring and staking plans, Crumlish wrote. After the problems deepened and work fell behind, the developer began withholding payments from Tutor Perini and the contractor did the same to some key subcontractors. The first lawsuit was filed in 2019.
Determining who was responsible for the slope of the floor slab, rather than simply shoring or leaning, became a key project issue once the problems became apparent.
Who is responsible for Cambering?
According to court records, subcontractor Thomas Carney said the camber—Deliberately deflecting a slab or structural element upwards in anticipation of downward deflection—it’s the balance of the designers.
Two engineers from the American Society of Concrete Contractors offered perspective on the issue in 2019. “Form chamber requirements for cast-in-place reinforced concrete are much less common today than in the past, but when bidding on work that requires the forms to be inclined, concrete contractors should be cautious,” they warned in an article on the website forconstructionrpros.com. “According to American Concrete Institute Formwork for concretecontractors are expected to “… establish and maintain forms to ensure work is completed to the chamber specified by the engineer/architect, within specified tolerance limits.”
The institute’s guidance “does not have a camber tolerance and establishing reasonable tolerance limits is not an easy task for the engineer/architect.” they wrote
By sitting for a lengthy statement by Chestlen’s attorney Peter Sheridan in Lansdale, Pa., on Nov. 13, 2023, Bob Carney said his company tried to fix the problems on its own
During the deposition, the attorney repeatedly pressed Carney about how his company’s final decision to gut some of the hotel’s upper floors was made and how the work was done.
When work reached the 18th floor, Carney recalled, “we had seen these deviations, we sought information from” structural engineer O’Donnell and Naccarato and “asked guardian Perini. [it] this question, and [firm members] he said, “camber is the contractor’s responsibility.”
Both Tutor Perini and Carney claim in the separate civil lawsuits that the designers’ work product, or “service tools,” were deficient and contained errors and omissions that explain much of what went wrong with the project.
In court filings, O’Donnell & Naccarato strongly denies the allegation that design defects or omissions are to blame and last year requested a jury instead of a trial.
Engineer: Failed construction equipment
O’Donnell & Naccarato argued that Carney and other members of the construction team “failed to meet structural specifications” and “otherwise performed their work improperly, resulting in unexpected and excessive deflection of the concrete slabs.”
With responsibility for what was happening on the project unresolved in 2017 or 2018, Carney said, “‘We took it upon ourselves to say where we can add camber and how much we can add to reduce those deviations. [the structure]and in a lot of locations we looked at the flats and where the deflections were, and we were going through and adding camber.”
In 2019, the subcontractor sent an invoice to Tutor Perini for the cost of additional “camber” on the shore decks on levels 18 to 50.
Attorney Sheridan asked Carney at the deposition to explain the criteria used to “improve the situation in the camber facility”?
He asked, “Where is this written so that I can see and understand it now?”
Carney replied, “I think I said before that we didn’t write anything and we didn’t record anything.” He added, “We’d go to the floor or floors below and see where our biggest deviations were. Then we’d go back up, and we’d put camber in the areas where we thought we could improve the situation.”
The window installation contractor and guardian Perini “were aware of what was going on in terms of deflection around those perimeters,” Carney continued. “So we were at the top and we said ‘well, we don’t want to continue with this. Let’s see what we can do to try to make it better’.”
