In the last couple of weeks, two exciting things happened on the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center project. On November 7, the first truckloads of steel arrived onsite from Merrill Iron & Steel in Schofield, Wisconsin and project partner JP Cullen installed the first columns and beams onsite. With the installation of the steel, onlookers will now see the building taking shape with the vertical steel. A project of this size requires a significant amount of steel. Some fun facts on the structural steel for the project include:

• 358 column locations
• 7,673 main structural steel pieces (i.e. columns & beams) = 1,217 total column pieces + 6,456 main structural steel beams
• Over 6,000 additional miscellaneous structural steel pieces (i.e. angle braces, stub columns)
• 89,417 structural bolts
• Over 8,000 tons or 16 million pounds of structural steel
• 51,842 shear studs and 13,338 dowel bar anchors

Additionally, on November 14, just over 50 Grade 65 steel beams for the Arena’s roof trusses arrived in the Port of Milwaukee from a steel mill in Luxembourg. The beams were unloaded and in the coming weeks will be trucked to Merrill Iron & Steel to be cut, detailed, drilled, coped, painted, and fabricated to meet the design specs. The Grade 65 steel, which can only be produced internationally, makes up about 4% of the overall steel on the project, with the other 96% being produced domestically. In Spring 2017, the completed steel will be brought back down to site where it will be assembled into the 200-foot roof trusses and installed onsite one at a time. The first of nine roof trusses is scheduled to be installed in May 2017.