Pier 70 Building 12

Historic Building 12 lies at the heart of a new 28-acre neighborhood rising at a historic shipyard property at Pier 70 along San Francisco’s Central Waterfront. Built in 1941, it is one of the West Coast's oldest steel ship-manufacturing buildings, where thousands of ironworkers once cut and bent metal plates to form ship hulls used during World War II. In the 1960s, ironworkers there assembled massive steel tubes for the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s (BART) Transbay Tube. Newly restored, the next iteration of the 230,000-square-foot structure (with a football field-sized footprint) will be home to a new generation of building and industry that includes maker spaces for local artisans and neighborhood retailers and office and event space as part of the transformative development by Brookfield Properties.

At Building 12, CEI served as lead electrical engineer and contractor and performed all electrical infrastructure work, branch circuits, lighting and controls and low voltage conduit. CEI Project Manager Dom Cacciatore called the work “an art project."  He said, “Our field leaders had very strong relationships with the general contractor and architect, and we adhered to their high aesthetic standards. The architect especially appreciated our field team's attention to detail and skill in installing all the exposed conduit.”

This attention to detail helped maintain the building’s gritty character. For example, lighting showcases the rugged architecture, including exposed steel beams and ceilings. A large percentage of the conduit is visible, which required precise, clean bends on each of the buildings’ four floors. The switchgear was installed in a new underground parking garage that was created after the general contractor lifted the entire structure 10 feet for sea level rise protection. Work on that level required a leave-out panel in the exterior wall and using a "jack-and-roll" method to move the heavy equipment into place below grade. Now complete, CEI’s work matched Building 12’s lofty stature as it readies itself for a new chapter in its storied history.