This article originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Modern Steel Construction.
Key Takeaways
- Material reuse project pulled existing steel members from Georgia Tech’s football stadium renovation and used them in a new athletic facility on campus.
- Twenty steel members were harvested from a portion of the stadium that was deconstructed to make room for a new training facility.
- Ultimately, about 25 tons of steel were salvaged and reused in the new building, saving about 25,000 kg of carbon emissions.
Overview
A new student-athlete training facility built in a corner of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s football stadium quite literally includes pieces of the athletic department’s past. They are not showcased in a trophy case or memorabilia display. Rather, they are part of the building itself.
The Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center’s steel frame has about 20 members that were removed from adjacent Bobby Dodd Stadium, home of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team, and incorporated into the facility’s design. Those members were harvested from a portion of the stadium that was deconstructed to make room for the facility.
The 100,000-sq. ft Fanning Center is one of a growing number of structures in the United States, and one of the first in the Southeast, to use salvaged steel from another structure in the project’s construction. This steel member reuse design strategy is part of the overall goal of material circularity, which helps minimize waste, promote construction efficiency, and reduce embodied carbon.
Steel Reuse Strategy
Steel reuse is central to the Fanning Center project, and successful reuse requires careful planning and coordination by the project team from start to finish. A constant line of communication among trades—which included architect S/L/A/M Collaborative, general contractor DPR Construction, structural engineer Walter P Moore, steel fabricator Steel, LLC, and demolition contractor Green Circle Demolition—was vital to ensure the steel reuse strategy was properly coordinated.
“The biggest difference was factoring in the time required for coordination and getting engagement from all parties as early as possible,” said Sarah Rohlfsen, project engineer at DPR Construction. “We had trade partners on board to consult a year before we ever started demo or steel erection. It was crucial to have Walter P Moore’s selected members for reuse early on so that we could get buy-in from demo and steel trade partners on sequencing, storage, and installation. Getting this feedback while we were still in the preconstruction phase was also incredibly beneficial so that we could analyze any required costs and include proper language into subcontracts.”
The entire project team was engaged in the steel reuse discussions to ensure a smooth and coordinated process. Group engagement from the start created a clear and concise understanding of the logistics, technical complexities, and expectations pertaining to each party’s specific discipline.
“Extensive work was done on DPR’s side to make sure every single member was labeled and tracked from the second that it was cut from the stadium, to when it was being loaded onto a truck, to when it was processed by the steel fabricator, and back on site,” Rohlfsen said. “Production tracking markups and logs were sent almost daily to demo and steel trade partners with status updates on each piece.”
Reducing Carbon Emissions
Walter P Moore advocated for the single project steel reuse design strategy, which was implemented at no additional cost to Georgia Tech and had no impact to the project schedule.
“Designing for reuse is a much more sustainable strategy,” said Marc Clear, principal and sports national market leader at the S/L/ A/M Collaborative. “Designing for material circularity is a way we can do so much better than just recycling. The reused steel also paired well with the Fanning Center’s hybrid steel-timber structure for a great study in circularity, carbon reduction, and carbon sequestering—all strategies to reduce the embodied carbon of the building.”
The project team opted to reuse the steel members to avoid carbon emissions stemming from steel recycling and reproduction. While recycled electric arc furnace steel undergoes an efficient process, it still produces emissions from transport to a mill that could be hundreds of miles away and operating a furnace to melt it.
In this reuse project, though, the steel traveled just nine miles to Steel, LLC’s fabrication shop, where it was refabricated and equipped with new connections, and returned to the jobsite for installation. The 18-mile round trip made for minimal transportation-related emissions, and fabrication itself is a low emission activity.
Ultimately, about 25 tons of steel were salvaged and reused in the new building, saving about 25,000 kg of carbon emissions, equivalent to the emissions of driving a gas-powered vehicle for 60,000 miles.
