Fire-rated wood frame from a hotel of the type used in the Burj Khalifa.
Warm Springs Composite Products (WSCP), a manufacturer of fire-rated components and materials in Warm Springs, Ore., supplied components for the fire-rated wood door frames and fire doors used on many of the floors in the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. WSCP also provided the certifications necessary to ensure the doors and frames would meet the strict building codes required for a 160-story building.
"The door and frame supplier for the Burj Khalifa understood how our products worked from a quality standpoint, but the real value we were able to bring to the table was the certifications we carry and our ability to help the supplier properly construct doors and frames that would retain those certifications," explained Jacob Coochise, WSCP's director of global business development.
Other notable structures in the Middle East that have utilized WSCP products include the Bahrain World Trade Center and the Palm Jumeirah Fairmont Hotel, among others.
The Burj Khalifa, formerly known as the Burj Dubai, was renamed just prior to opening to honor United Arab Emirates president Khalifa Bin Zayed. The building is 2,717 feet tall, more than 1,000 feet taller than the next tallest building (the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan). The Burj Khalifa was designed and engineered by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Chicago-based architecture firm that also designed the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago and One World Trade Center in New York City, along with several other famous skyscrapers.
Because the architect and design firm are U.S.-based, the building was designed to U.S. standards, a growing trend in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. As such, suppliers of the doors and frames, as well as numerous other components, had to be brought up to speed on how to meet those standards.
"We work with our manufacturer customers in other parts of the world to ensure that they are equipped to manufacture using our components to meet the appropriate standards, U.S. standards in this case," Coochise said. "The manufacturer we worked with was Design Studio Manufacturing, based in Malaysia. I spent more than a week over there helping them understand how to construct doors and frames according to WSCP specifications and also help them to become a licensed manufacturer under Warnock Hersey so that their products could retain our certifications.
U.S. building safety standards are the strictest in the world and disasters such as the recent earthquake in Haiti are drawing increased attention to the need for stricter standards worldwide, a trend that has not been lost on WSCP's Coochise and others.
Exterior view of the Burj Khalifa (formerly known as the Burj Dubai).
The Burj Khalifa consists of luxury residential apartments, high-end office space and the Armani Hotel, which takes up four floors. WSCP worked closely with the builder to help create a unique door system for the hotel that incorporates 4-inch thick doors and state of the art security systems.
WSCP operates out of a plant on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and holds several patents that help make it an important supplier of fire-rated building components in the U.S. Among those is the company's core product, called Tectonite, an amalgam of diatomaceous earth, fiberglass, cellulose and other ingredients.
Tectonite is used as the base material for a variety of products sold into the fire-rated architectural door industry. In addition, WSCP has patented processes involving the use of intumescent material, combined with everyday building materials, to provide fire-rated wood door frames that can be matched with architectural fire doors to give architects matching wood species options.
"While the U.S. building market has been sluggish over the past 12-18 months, that has not been the case in all markets around the world," WSCP's Duane Darnell said. "Thanks to our efforts in overseas markets, we saw positive growth during 2009. That's something not a lot of others in the building materials business can say."
WSCP is one of several business units owned and operated by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. In addition to the Kah-nee-tah resort and casino, the tribes also operate Power Enterprises, a hydroelectric plant, Warm Springs Forest Products, which includes a lumber mill as well as an FSC-certified forestry operation, and the Museum at Warm Springs.
Besides its fire-rated materials business, WSCP also has a ballistics division that develops a wide range of bullet-proofing materials used in a variety of products including doors, ceiling panels, military vehicles, boats and virtually anywhere bullet-proofing might be necessary.
For more information on Warm Springs Composite Products, call 800.853.1143.