Production Building

John Deere Des Moines Works Building 40, Deere Company’s new production building on the John Deere Des Moines Works Campus in Ankeny, IA is 301,458 square feet with a standard 40×60 ft column grid. The owner’s need for 30 ft clear heights and no internal lateral bracing led to the design of lateral load resisting frames using joist girders. The additional requirement of flexibility in bottom chord loading due to multiple bridge crane layouts led to joist girders at 20 O.C. with additional capacity for future bottom chord loading. The repetitive nature of the framing layout allowed for construction of 20×30 ft portions of joists and deck to be constructed on the ground and erected as one piece. This allowed the erector to place all steel in 42 days, approximately 15 bays per week.