FACILITY & PLANT SERVICES, INC. a Fluor Daniel Company
3936 Highway 52 North, PMB-152
Rochester, MN 55901-0108

To Whom it May Concern,

My name is Zaina Dadah and I am an Assoc. Architect with Facility & Plant Services (F&PS) a division of Fluor Global Services. F&PS is the facility service vender for several IBM plants in the US and Australia. I left Fluor Daniel Architecture Department at the corporate headquarters office in Irvine California and joined F&PS in 1997. I was sent to the IBM plant in Rochester Minnesota to join their facilities engineering team. Shortly after I arrived, I was responding to complaints of water leakage in offices and corridors along the exterior curtain wall.

Water was obviously entering the buildings through the curtain wall. Cold air could also be felt along the curtain wall contributing to high energy costs for the facility. The existing curtain wall was a dry seal system using EPDM rubber zipper gaskets to hold glazing units and vitreous enameled insulated steel panels between full building height vertical aluminum mullions spaced every 4'-0" on center. The only thing I could do to try and alleviate the water leakage problem was to drill weep holes in the horizontal gaskets. this solution had limited success. Water still collected in the gaskets. This would eventually rust the seal between the two panes of glass in the double glazing units breaking the seal and causing the windows to fog. The site had an annual window replacement budget of $150K. In November of 1997 I began receiving calls of a yellow powder on sills and perimeter heat registers. I suspected the powder was the insulation within the panels falling through rusted holes that were visible at the bottom of the panels. Many facilities personnel disagreed, so I had our industrial hygienist submit samples of this powder to a lab. The powder was in fact an insulation material and did not contain asbestos (it has been found that some buildings on site do contain asbestos in their panels). In 1997 F&PS completed a project to fill one of the courtyards on the south side of the site campus between two of the buildings with a new loading dock, the building 104A loading dock. I took three of the curtain wall panels removed as a result of that project and had the on site sheet metal contractor open the panels. I have included photos of what was found (photos currently unavailable on our website). Insulation was completely deteriorated and had slumped to the bottom of the panels. There were holes rusted through the lip of the panel faces. The panels could now be said to have no R-value. I finally had a case to get support from the customer, IBM, for a study. In 1998 I began the study. In the study I reviewed almost every type of curtain wall system and included the estimated cost and feasibility of each system with a detailed 10 year plan for site wide curtain wall replacement. After the initial presentation of the study and several discussions with the customer an outline of requirements for the new system was developed. The requirements were the following: 1. The buildings must maintain a similar appearance from a distance of 80'-0". The main site campus, also known as 'The Blue Zoo', was designed by the world famous architect Eero Saarinen. Models and plans of the facility had been displayed in an exhibit in Washington on important US architecture. This is why the customer required the appearance to be maintained. 2. The new system must not leak. 3. The new system must increase energy efficiency for the facility. 4. The new system must be able to be quickly erected. 5. And finally, since the curtain wall replacement project would span ten or more years, an annualized yearly firm fixed cost must be established. The only system that could meet all the customer requirements and the only system to guarantee no leakage was Ting Wall. Ting Wall also had a number of other benefits. Ting Wall could be designed to fit into the existing vertical mullions reducing the cost to a fraction of the other systems and helping to maintain the appearance of the building facade. With Ting Wall I am able to specify the panel face and finish, the insulation and the glazing units allowing me to ensure the appearance of 'The Blue Zoo' is maintained. Ting Wall could be installed quickly enabling the wall to be closed at the end of each day maintaining site security and contributing to cost savings. Other systems required our mullions to be replaced effecting the appearance and inflating the cost. Security was also an issue with the other systems since they would not be able to close the wall each evening. Other systems would have required additional labor and material to secure the facility nightly or would have to hire security guards to stand guard all night where the wall was open, either way this would have added enormous cost to the project. The customer schose Ting Wall.

IBM required Advanced Building Systems Inc. (ABS) to provide at least three licensed installers and three licensed fabricators for the Ting Wall so the project could be competitively bid. ABS was cooperative and quickly licensed four fabricators and three installers. In November of 1999 a set of drawings for total curtain wall replacement of one of the buildings on site, building 030, was released with Requests For Quotation (RFQ) to the three licensed installers. The project was awarded to Ford Metro, a local Rochester contractor, December of 1999. The contract with Ford Metro was contingent on the mockup passing the testing in Pittsburgh in February of 2000. if the mockup failed the testing, the contract with Ford Metro and the project would be canceled. IBM site architect Pat Halsey, structural civil technical coordinator Chuck Schweighart and myself flew to Pittsburgh for the testing and everyone was amazed at the performance of the mockup. I am happy to announce construction shall begin in September of 2000 and will continue until all 440,000 square feet of curtain wall at the IBM Rochester main site has been replaced.

Sincerely,

Zaina M. Dadah