Prescient Building Structure and Window Washing Systems

Prescient is a company that designs and constructs buildings with a proprietary light gauge steel design.  They are a new company founded in 2012 in the US that over the past few years, has begun applying their construction methods on mid and high-rise buildings. Building with Prescient provides developers/owners with both savings in construction costs as well as shorter durations in scheduling. 

 

The floor/roof design is a series of vertical Prescient columns and horizontal trusses. Unlike a conventional steel structure where window washing anchors can be located on beams or joists with the structure appropriately reinforced, anchors on a Prescient structure can only be placed at the top of column locations. 

 

This can make design very challenging for Pro-Bel as the percentage of surface area that can accommodate a window washing anchor is approximately 5% of the roof. With such a small amount of locations that can accommodate anchors, the designs are almost never ideal for window washing and often require the use of a swing stage to access all windows. In some rare cases, windows are noted to be inaccessible on our shop drawings. For this reason, it's critical that we reach out to the architect to get involved with the anchor design very early to ensure proper coordination. 

 

At roof anchor locations, Prescient will extend the column approximately 6” above the metal deck and provide a plate with pre-drilled holes. A Pro-Bel roof anchor with base plate will then be bolted to the lower Prescient plate. Typically, Prescient requires a thermal break material, which is always supplied by others, to be installed between the Pro-Bel plate and the Prescient plate. 

 

Prescient columns can also, upon request, be extended up into the parapet. Again, Prescient will provide a plate on the face of the column in the parapet to receive a Pro-Bel wall anchor.  

 

We've completed several projects with Prescient so far, including: Novel Midtown in Atlanta, Georgia and Live Grandscape in Texas. 

 

As mentioned above, close collaboration with architects early in the process is very important to ensure a seamless integration of our systems into Prescient structures. Below you can download our Prescient roof and wall anchor details for more information on the technical requirements.