SEATTLE, WA — Haley & Aldrich announces that the company has won the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Washington’s Engineering Excellence Platinum Award — the highest state honor — and a national Grand Award for its work on Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena. As a result of winning a Grand Award, the Climate Pledge Arena project is in the running for the ACEC’s Grand Conceptor Award, which is the year’s top engineering achievement.

“These awards are a tremendous honor for the entire Climate Pledge Arena project team,” said David Winter, the Principal-in-Charge for the project and General Manager of Haley & Aldrich’s Hart Crowser Business Unit. “This project presented a number of significant and unusual challenges, and our team collaboratively and productively worked through those during the height of the pandemic. The result is a tribute to everyone involved.”

The project team needed to build the new facility on the downtown site of the old arena, originally constructed for the Seattle World’s Fair. However, the existing arena featured a 57-year-old, 22,000-ton concrete roof designed by architect Paul Thiry in the “Seattle Modernist” style and was deemed a landmark that needed to be used for the new arena.

The team’s greatest challenge was to develop a design and monitoring approach to ensure the roof stayed in place and in one piece while lowering the playing surface and doubling the size of the arena below. The brittle roof structure could only move one-quarter inch without damaging it. Haley & Aldrich developed an approach that allowed the roof to be supported without movement during existing arena demolition, excavation, and new arena reconstruction.

The Climate Pledge Arena, the first net-zero professional sports venue, opened on time and ready for the puck to drop on the 2021-2022 National Hockey League season.