Pentagon Phoenix Project, Arlington, Va.

September 5, 2002

ARLINGTON, Va. – Last year, it was just a routine move-in. This past month, when Pentagon employees started returning again to the section known as Wedge 1, newly clad in Indiana limestone, it was anything but ordinary.
The distance between the two events can’t be measured in just days. In 2001, workers were returning to space that underwent a three-year renovation to update the World War II-era home of the Department of Defense.
Then came the horrific events of September 11, and the deaths of 186 people when terrorists deliberately flew a commercial airliner into the building, destroying much of Wedge 1 and parts of adjoining Wedge 2.
To show this country’s resolve, government officials vowed not just to rebuild the damaged portions of the building, but also to have displaced employees back at their desks in Wedge 1 by the first anniversary of the attack.
Dubbed “The Phoenix Project,” the battered building rose from its ashes in what may be one of the most-impressive construction schedules since the original structure was erected in a 16-month span. And, it involved the reworking of the famous building’s limestone … with a surprising amount surviving the terrorist attack.
For some, it was just a continuation of work they’d been doing on the original renovation of Wedge 1. For others, such as Independent Limestone Co. of Bloomington, Ind., the involvement dates back to the original construction, when it supplied limestone for the original outer façade.
When contacted about supplying the stone for the Phoenix Project last October, crews there were in the process of stockpiling stone for the winter shutdown.
“The fabricators – Bybee Stone Company Inc. – came down with some architects and looked at the stone we had to supply and made a decision,” says Independent’s general manager, Steve Cummings. “I think the fact that we had it on inventory helped us establish this contract with Bybee.”
Cummings says it wasn’t very dificult to get the entire order of some 18,000 cubic feet shipped to Bybee’s Ellettsville, Ind., facility for the start of fabrication work the first week of December.
Company president William Bybee notes his company has done other work for the Pentagon in recent years, including fabricating the stonework for steps and walkways installed during the pre-attack Wedge 1 renovation. (The company also has the contract to fabricate a new entrance to the Metro subway station that serves the building.)
“We also have a very good relationship with the masonry contractor, MasonryArts Inc., who was already on the site doing restoration of the building,” Bybee says. “And, we had the facilities to do this kind of project, both size-wise and schedule-wise.”
Bybee also had another factor in its favor: The ability to do a shot-sawn finish on the stones used for the façade. Duplicating the original finish is critical, since the Pentagon is a National Historic Landmark.
“We do a lot new buildings, but we also do restoration work,” Bybee says. “A lot of the old Indiana limestone buildings have chat-sawn and shot-sawn finishes; when you add to those buildings, or something has to be restored, you have to match the surface conditions.”
Although his company was already working two shifts, Bybee says the company was able to complete the fabrication of stone for the Pentagon job without adding people or putting off other jobs. He adds that, in one respect, the job was a pleasure to deal with, even though the timing on it was tight.
“We can do things this quickly when people get us the information in a short amount of time,” he says. “In this case, it was an existing building, they had an archive of existing drawings, and they also had a group of people who were dedicated to moving it forward.”
As it was, the fabricator had almost 50 percent of the job on-site before Bessemer, Ala.-based MasonryArts began setting stone in early February. The entire 45 truckloads were fabricated and delivered by the end of April.
MasonryArts President Roy Swindal says his company was very familiar with the Pentagon before the Phoenix Project began. The firm had as many as 90 people involved in the Wedge 1 restoration.
In fact, Swindal had a two-person crew working in Wedge 1 on September 11 completing punch-list items; the pair was picking up supplies and away from the building when the jet struck at 9:38 a.m. EDT.
“They knew they had to have someone who could get the façade back up and do it very quickly,” Swindal says to explain his company’s involvement in the Phoenix Project. “They knew we were a stone contractor as well as a cladding contractor, and so we were awarded the job to take down and restore some of the stone in the building and then furnish new stone to replace that which could not be reworked.”
MasonryArts was actively involved from the beginning in efforts to reclaim the Wedge.
“We had people on the job just about 24 hours a day for the first 20 weeks because of the planning involved and trying to get it all together and develop scheduling information,” Swindal says. “We spent a lot of time trying to find ways to get the stone there in 25 percent of the time if would normally require.”
The company was also heavily involved in the demolition of the damaged sections, which began Oct. 18 and took only a month. During the demolition, the façade and cornice stones were removed from the damaged structure piece by piece, numbered and placed in a separate area for possible restoration and reuse.
MasonryArts also convinced Roy Thompson, former owner of TGM Associates, Contemporary Marble Contractors and ROYTHO Inc., to return to this country from his retirement in Italy and act as project executive coordinating the stone replacement effort.
Swindal estimates between 20 percent and 25 percent of the stones were ultimately salvaged. With the services of an historical restoration contractor available, MasonryArts partnered with the Lawrence, Kan.-based PROSOCO to remove a mixture of carbon and jet fuel from the undamaged stones.
“We did what we could,” Swindal says. “We recut some of it to fit in places where it might not have worked otherwise. In some cases, we could refabricate the stone and actually make it work. We used as much of it as we could because they wanted part of the old building back up.”
Once the actual work of setting the stone began in early February, the company employed locally based R. Bratti Associates to perform the installation. That company had between 40-45 people working 10-hour days, six days a week, to complete the job by the June 11 deadline set to finish the façade. MasonryArts designed the specialized scaffold system and provided all the hoisting and site logistics, so Bratti could concentrate on stone-setting.
On June 11, the contractor was also on hand to help set a memorial – a single 2’ X 5’ block, still blackened from the assault, with the September date carved in it.
“We had a very good plan and it was well-organized,” says Swindal. “We also had an extremely good supplier. Bybee was able to get the stone to us before we needed it, which was the critical part of this job.”