Massive Dreamliner Jet Plant Takes Shape

Bright yellow construction cranes pierce the blue sky above Boeing Co.'s half-built jet manufacturing plant, beaming like spotlights to call attention to the largest economic development project in Lowcountry history.

The building's ultimate purpose, to house thousands of workers who will piece together the aviation giant's new 787 passenger jets, can distract from the construction under way at Charleston International Airport. But building the structure's skeletal frame, now mostly covered with white panelling, has proven to be a feat itself.

Against stubborn weather and with a roster of more than 1,800 construction workers, many of whom have never worked on a project of such magnitude, the $750 million building project is on track to finish in July. And workers are scheduled to celebrate a milestone later this month after they place the last major piece of steel atop the elaborate structure.

**Sizable scope **Construction manager Kenny Anderson says he steps back almost daily to admire the nearly incomprehensible scope of the project.

"It's amazing when you consider we broke ground nine months ago," he said, noting that even simple tasks such as trash removal and parking have become major orchestrations at the site.

Two construction firms, BE&K of Greenville and Turner Construction of New York, pooled together their resources to bid on the North Charleston project. But where superlatives and still photographs fail to reflect the project's enormity, the company has numbers to help quantify it.

Measure it by the 2.4 million cubic feet of concrete, enough to fill 28 Olympic-size swimming pools, that will create a vast taxiway and parking apron for the new 787 Dreamliners. Or the triangular roof trusses that peak at a height that's as tall as the average commercial building. Or the 27,000-pound columns that from a distance look like toothpicks but weigh more than a semi-truck.

Since April, ironworkers have pieced together the rust-colored steel beams to form the skeleton of the 1.2 million-square-foot building. The lofty task calls for thousands of individual welds, hundreds of thousands of bolts and an army of roughly 700 workers.

Each roof truss, once delicately placed atop the 114-foot building, needs to be locked into place with about 10,000 bolts. And each of the building's 11 roof trusses weighs 400 tons each, easily heavier than a Dreamliner jet filled with passengers, luggage and fuel.

All this construction activity is taking place on a patch of earth that once had the stability of a bowl of chocolate pudding.

Once the trees were cleared from the 150-acre tract along South Aviation Avenue, workers scraped off up to 15 feet of the shaky brown dirt that remained. In its place, they laid sand collected from a mining pit off Clements Ferry Road on Daniel Island.

Workers then pounded 80-foot-long support beams into the earth to create an underground support system.

Weather report The tedious task of trucking dirt back and forth over U.S. Interstate 526 would have been routine were it not for the last year's erratic weather, complete with a freak snowstorm in February.

By the time construction crews set out to start placing beams in April, nearly 26 inches of rain had soaked the site. That's 9 inches more than the seasonal average.

and for days, heaps of rain-drenched sand had to sit on the fringe of the project's footprint, waiting for warming weather to dry it out.

Now, the weather has posed a different extreme as the scorching heat threatens to put workers in danger. Every so often, they retreat to a tent that's stocked with water, Gatorade and industrial-size misting fans.

And the summer season isn't over yet. As early reports of Hurricane Earl last week predicted bands of strong rains and wind might spin off into Charleston, construction managers began running mental lists of things on the site that could be blown around, Anderson said.

Safety isn't given a fleeting thought here. On the same day that officials will celebrate the project's "topping out," they're also scheduled to pass another milestone: more than 1 million manhours logged without an accident.

Anderson points this out with cautious wording. "I don't want to say it outright because I don't want to jinx myself," he said last week.

Once the building's frame is enclosed, construction employment will swell to 1,200 workers. The expanded crews will help install manufacturing equipment, finish flooring and outfit the two office towers within the growing Boeing campus.

Outside, another team of workers will begin pouring a 16-inch thick blanket of concrete on an adjacent field, creating a nearly 80-acre parking lot for the Dreamliner jets.

**Behind the scenes **As the construction progresses outside, Boeing executives inside have begun filling positions at the upper management level for the new assembly plant.

Local real estate agents have reported selling homes to workers who've landed jobs for the new operation. Local Boeing spokeswoman Candy Eslinger confirmed that the aerospace giant has started hiring assembly mechanics, quality inspectors and other support functions such as finance and planning.

Several local real estate firms told The Post and Courier they've gotten about two dozen sales and more than 100 leads from Boeing's Texas-based real estate intermediary, Altair Global Relocation.

New Boeing employees are picking homes in Summerville, Mount Pleasant and West Ashley. Some used to work for NASA, and each has a different timeline for buying a home.

"They're all over," said Paul Dunkle, director of relocation for Coldwell Banker United. "It's hard to specify really who the buyer is."

In a high-profile example from earlier this year, the assembly plant's top executive, Marco Cavazzoni, bought a property on Daniel Island with golf course views.

More sales are likely to come as most of the plant's projected 3,800 jobs remain unfilled. Hiring for the plant's production workers is expected to ramp up this fall.

Company officials said the plant will open next summer with an estimated payroll of 1,000 employees, gradually adding staff as the plant begins churning out its expected production output of three Dreamliners per month.

By the numbers Some statistics about the Boeing 787 assembly plant being built in North Charleston:

15,000 tons: Total weight of the steel. 2.2 million: Amount of dirt in cubic yards moved on and off the site. 1,800: Number of construction workers who've worked at the site since its November groundbreaking.

Source: Boeing Co