If it weren’t for the Great Recession and Sean Beatty, building the curved reinforced concrete sea creature tanks in the 50,000-square-foot Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion would have been even more arduous.
Without the recession of 2007-9, Beatty would not have been laid off from his job at a small architecture firm in Seattle. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have done a second master’s degree, this time in construction management. And he wouldn’t have gotten a job at Turner Construction Co., eventually joining the virtual design and construction department, where he became critical to the success of Turner’s bold work at the aquarium.
Without Beatty inspiring his VDC team, Turner, who did his own concrete work, may not have developed a detailed 3D digital concrete model for the tanks. The model was key as it allowed the integration of the various incompatible 3D manufacturing models of the different parties involved with the reservoir, a job further complicated by a fill site along the shoreline in a seismic zone high
“We engaged Sean [for the aquarium] during preconstruction because he was able to help the whole team,” including the client, LMN Architects and structural engineer Magnusson Klemencic Associates, “visualize how we were going to build this,” says Turner Aquarium Construction Executive Stuart Kibbee . “As the work progressed, Sean was able to think of how to use the model to build the damn thing.”
No simple exercise. Software vendors for manufacturing models from various vendors said their packages could not be integrated into Turner’s model, which was critical.
Beatty proved them wrong. “Under Sean’s leadership, Arash Naderpour worked to standardize and consolidate the formwork, rebar and MEP models from various programs into one space for complete fabrication-level assembly,” says Kibbee. “Also, Arash wrote code both to model the complex armor and to translate it into other programs,” he adds, saving thousands of hours of rework.
CMC Rebar operations manager Patrick Nation says CMC’s “monstrous job” wouldn’t have been possible without Turner’s model, which showed all the rebars bent and positioned.
“It was really fun to see what Sean set up,” adds Aaron Dietzen, Trimble’s senior product content manager for SketchUp software, which uses Turner. “Unlike most others at VDC, Sean knew what was going on in the project.”
Sean Beatty
Photo courtesy of Turner Construction
Beatty, director of the VDC department since 2022, agrees that the potential for error and rework would have been “huge”, without the detailed model, but says it is “just a cog in the wheel”. He calls the job “a massive team effort,” from the client to the workers, going well beyond himself and his own “big team” of 12 people at Turner’s VDC group.
In high school in Fairfax, Va., Beatty says she focused more on ceramics than academics. But I knew I would study architecture. He went to Washington State University because he wanted to drive across the United States, be away from home in a small college town, and be able to snowboard. He earned his master’s degree in architecture in 2006 and worked until the recession hit. He received his master’s degree in construction management from the University of Washington in 2011. Turner hired him on April Fool’s Day 2011. In 2015 he joined his VDC group.
VDC’s work offers “creative opportunities,” says Beatty. “Our solutions help save money,” he adds.
The aquarium, nearing completion, is the “pinnacle,” says Beatty. Still, he’s excited about the future, and especially about artificial intelligence, which he calls augmented intelligence.
“These digital tools are essential to making us better builders,” he says.
