When it comes to steel building projects, it’s often structures with complex architectural designs that get all the buzz and attention. Archways, curved stairs, elaborate rooflines, high rise towers—anything that looks good in pictures.
But some projects deserve applause for their sheer size and the massive effort it takes to coordinate and manage such huge models on tight deadlines.
Here we’re counting down some of the highest-tonnage steel projects detailed in SDS2 in recent years. From towering skyscrapers to sprawling manufacturing and medical facilities, these monumental projects are sure to leave a lasting mark on the structural steel landscape.
~2,500 tons
13. Nestlé Purina Garden Keeper Pet Food Factory
DETAILER: ARTERAS, INC
An old brewery was transformed into a state-of-the-art pet food factory in Eden, North Carolina. Weighing in at 2,500 tons, encompassing 1.3 million square feet, and costing more than $450 million, this facility featured a variety of challenging features common in industrial facilities, including silo supports, stairs, handrails, grating, and more. It opened for business in 2022, generating an estimated 300 jobs and producing leading varieties of cat and dog food.
12. Halo Apartment Tower
DETAILER: CANAM GROUP
This luxury apartment complex features two 18-story towers in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, and required some 15,000 detailing and engineering hours to complete. Though it was not structurally complicated, each floor came with slight variations, and the many people who worked on the project during the two years it took to complete had to be brought up to speed. Erection was scheduled over 52 weeks, and the structure totaled nearly 500,000 square feet.
11. Health Sciences Academic Building
DETAILER: CRONUS STEEL DETAILING
This 7-story addition to the University of Iowa campus weighed just over 2,500 tons and featured over 10,000 shipping pieces, including numerous large-scale embed plates and a few heavy plate girders. According to the Cronus team, they had up to 10 detailers working on the project at the same time in SDS2’s live multi-user modeling environment, synchronizing efforts and ensuring that multiple stages of the project could be completed simultaneously.
~3,000 tons
10. FUZE Ballpark Residential Complex
DETAILER: CARTEE-BERRY & ASSOCIATES
This residential complex in Glendale, Arizona, rang in at 566,000 square feet with nearly 2,900 tons of steel, and was as unique as it was large. It was designed using HSS shapes for all beams and columns, an innovative design move that promoted sustainability and enabled an offsite modular construction process. The HSS-centric necessitated other unique features, including unconventional vertical bracing and the use of Shuriken fasteners for over 90 percent of the connections.
9. Gillette Stadium North End-Zone Renovation
DETAILER: MOLD-TEK TECHNOLOGIES, INC
This renovation project revitalized the iconic home of the New England Patriots football team. It featured an enhanced 218-foot lighthouse, a 22,000-square-foot high-def video board, and additional amenities. The project came in at 3,000 tons, and structural challenges were numerous with multiple types of truss framing connections at cruciform columns, heavy connections at vertical and horizontal brace locations, and coordination of precast elements on sloped beams and columns.
8. Indiana University School of Medicine Medical Education Building
DETAILER: DGS TECHNICAL SERVICES
Indiana University invested $230 million in a new academic building to support their medical programs. Standing 11 stories tall and encompassing 326,000 square feet. Concrete construction was used for part of the building, but the building still required 3,025 tons of steel, with many support structures for partition walls, exam lights, and brick shelf angle supports.
7. Li-Cycle Commercial Hub 1
DETAILER: INNOVATIVE STEEL DETAILING, INC
The first hydrometallurgical battery resource recovery facility in North America, the Li-Cycle commercial hub in Rochester, New York, will process spent batteries and manufacturing scrap to produce battery-grade materials. The sprawling facility holds 14 buildings and spans 65-acres, including a 275,000 square foot warehouse and administration building. The structure made extensive use of large inner members and SDS2’s connection design intelligence to support and distribute large loads throughout the structure. When it opens, it will be North America’s only source of battery-grade lithium carbonate, making it a landmark of sustainable energy production. Detailed steel weighed in at over 3,200 tons.
~4,000 tons
6. Lotte Aluminium
DETAILER: ARTERAS, INC
Speaking of batteries and sustainability, the next largest project in our lineup is a manufacturing facility for cathode foil, a type of ultra-thin aluminum foil used in electric vehicle batteries. The 327,000 square-foot plant is expected to produce around 36,000 tons of cathode foil per year. The 4,000-ton project involved heavy structural columns that were shop-spliced, with different section sizes above and below the splice to support crane rails. It’s located just a few miles away from BlueOval City, another EV battery production plant you’ll see later in our list.
5. Logan International Airport, Terminal E Modernization
DETAILER: BEAUCE ATLAS
Weighing in at more than 4,500 tons of steel, this terminal modernization added 7 new gates to one of the busiest airports in the U.S. to accommodate increased traffic and the massive size of the Airbus A380s that connection Boston, Massachusetts, to cities worldwide. The project totaled nearly 4,600 tons of steel and incorporated some massive pipe columns connecting the floor to roof. The columns taper up to two feet in width and split, with one part angling 20 degrees up to the roof, connecting to an 18-inch cylindrical stub with moment connections.
~5,000 tons
4. Pet Food Facility
DETAILER: OVATION SERVICES, LLC
Pet food manufacturing and processing plants have seen a major boom in recent years, finding a hub in the U.S.’s heartland. This project, located in St. Charles, Missouri, and featured 5,300 tons of steel with plated floors, provisions for industrial silos, thermal break connections, HSS vertical brace receiving beams, a complex girt system, and much more. The detailing team collaborated frequently with other trades, bringing IFC models into SDS2 to ensure accuracy between the structural steel, industrial equipment, and the other trades involved.
~9,000 tons
3. Salesforce Tower
DETAILER: OVATION SERVICES, LLC
The top three biggest projects on our list are head and shoulders above the rest—this one, literally. The Salesforce Tower stands 835 feet above the downtown Chicago skyline, the tallest of three towers in a “megadevelopment” rising along the banks of the Chicago River in a historic district of the city. The 57-story building offers 1.2 million square feet of usable space and required around 9,000 tons of high-strength steel that enabled the stunning glass façade and column-free corners.
~10,000 tons
2. The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Inpatient Hospital
DETAILER: OVATION SERVICES, LLC
From manufacturing facilities and skyscrapers to medical complexes, Ovation Services is tackling monster projects of all types. Here they are again at #2 on our list with The Ohio State University’s largest single facilities project ever. It required approximately 10,000 tons of steel and featured a variety of challenging features, including cupola framing, kink columns, scroll cantilever with a cambered tip, lantern steel at the roof and a lantern structure throughout the building, a sawtooth structure at the perimeter of all floors, curtain wall connection supports, cambered trusses, celio framing, and a bridge connecting new and existing structures.
~47,000 tons
1. BlueOval SK Battery Plant
DETAILER: MOLD-TEK TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Bigger than the rest of the top 10 projects on our list combined, Ford Motor Company’s BlueOval SK Battery Plant takes “massive” to a whole new level. Located in Stanton, Tennessee, the facility spans 3.1 million square feet. It is one of several sites across Tennessee and Kentucky contributing to Ford’s “electric revolution,” where they will design, produce, and recycle batteries for their new line of electric vehicles. To manage the significant volume of steel, the collaboration of 17 fabricators, and the fast-paced timeline, the project was split into seven distinct SDS2 models and detailers worked around the clock. The Mold-Tek team detailed more than 700 trusses, along with numerous SFRS components, braced frames, and fireproof steel treated with intumescent paint.
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From sustainability-focused facilities to iconic structures, these projects highlight the remarkable capabilities of structural steel and the innovation of modern engineering. And behind every ton of steel in these 13 massive projects lies the hard work and ingenuity of steel detailers accounting for every bolt and weld to bring these monumental achievements to life.
Want to know how SDS2 can streamline your next massive steel project? Explore our solutions or contact our sales team today to discuss your needs and schedule a demo.