Panel schedules, shop drawings, embeds and lift stresses worked out before casting, so tilt-up walls in Oklahoma go up the way the drawings say.
Panels are designed twice, once by the engineer who sizes them for the finished building and again by the people who have to cast, lift and brace them. The first design answers the question of what the wall must carry. The second answers the question of whether it can survive a day on a crane without cracking, and whether the embeds, openings and reveals all land where the drawings say they should. Panel design coordination is the work of making those two answers agree before concrete is ordered.
We do this at the start of every tilt-up job, with the architect, the structural engineer and the trade subcontractors in the same conversation. A panel that looks simple on an elevation can hold a door opening, a louver, a downspout boot, several weld plates for the roof joists and a set of lifting inserts, and every one of those items has to be placed in the form before the pour. Missing one means field coring or a patch on a wall that is meant to look finished.
The result of good coordination is a set of panel shop drawings that the casting crew can build from without guessing. Owners rarely see these drawings, but they feel the effects in a clean lift day, in fewer change orders and in a building that closes in on the date they were given.
We start with a panel schedule that lists every panel by mark, width, height, thickness and weight, along with the openings and embeds that belong to it. From that schedule come the shop drawings, which show the reinforcing, the lifting inserts, the brace inserts, the casting face and any reveals or form liners. The engineer of record reviews them, and the lift engineer checks the picking points against the panel weight and the stresses that come when a flat slab of concrete is rotated upright.
Coordination with other trades is the part that saves rework. Electrical conduit that passes through a panel, a mechanical louver, a fire department connection, a roof drain scupper and an overflow all need either a sleeve or a blockout. We hold those requirements in one place and chase each trade for final dimensions, so a late equipment change does not turn into a saw-cut in a cured wall. For the connection details that carry roof and floor loads into the wall, see panel connections and embeds.
The Oklahoma Uniform Building Code Commission has adopted the editions of the International Building Code with amendments. That is the state minimum, but cities adopt and enforce their own editions. The City of Oklahoma City lists the International Building Code as its current adopted code, according to its published listing, and other large cities have posted editions as well. On a statewide project we confirm the edition with each building department rather than assume, because the wind, seismic and fire design criteria on the panel drawings depend on it.
Permit review for a tilt-up shell usually wants the panel drawings, the engineer's calculations and the connection details in the same package, and some departments want special inspection reports for the panels as they are cast. Our own permitting and inspections practice tracks those requirements, and it is a good reason to bring the panel designer into the permit conversation early rather than after the review comments arrive.
Wide openings weaken panels and complicate lifting, so we push for panel widths and opening sizes that keep stresses within what the reinforcing can handle without extra strongbacks or temporary steel. A dock wall with a long run of door openings, as on a cross-dock truck terminal, is the typical example. Narrow piers between doors can be cast as separate panels or tied with a header, and which way to go changes both the number of picks and the bracing that stays on the wall after it is set.
Architectural features need the same attention. Reveals, scored patterns and form liners affect where we can place inserts and how thick the panel is at its thinnest point, and our work on architectural reveals and form liners starts from that coordination. Casting a panel face up or face down changes which side picks up the form texture and which side is troweled, and that decision belongs on the shop drawings, not on the day of the pour.
Shop drawing review is a loop, and we run it quickly. We circulate drafts to the structural engineer, the architect and the major trades, collect comments in one list and resolve them panel by panel. When a question changes a dimension, we update the panel schedule at the same time so the casting crew never works from an older version.
Before the first lift we walk the layout with the superintendent and the crane operator, marking panel sequence on the slab, brace locations and the crane path. That walk turns the drawings into a plan people can follow, and it is the moment when a clash is cheapest to fix. The same review serves manufacturers with equipment openings and retail and big-box owners with storefront cutouts, each with a different list of penetrations to chase.
The National Weather Service Norman office counts 4,518 tornadoes in Oklahoma from 1950 onward, an average of 59.4 a year, and the design wind loads on a building are the engineer's to set. Moore adopted residential code provisions in 2014 requiring new homes to withstand winds up to 135 miles per hour, a reminder of how seriously the state treats wind in the built environment, though that rule applies to houses and not to commercial shells.
What coordination can do is make sure the roof diaphragm, the wall-to-roof connections and the wall-to-footing connections are all built as designed. In the gap between lift day and roof completion the walls are braced temporarily, which is covered in our page on temporary panel bracing, and that temporary design is part of the same coordination.
If you have a panel layout in design, send it over. We will review it for casting, lifting and opening coordination and tell you what we would change before it reaches the permit set.
The structural engineer of record designs the wall panels for the completed building loads. We coordinate the shop drawings, review lifting stresses with the lift engineer and make sure the embeds and openings match the contract documents. If a panel needs a change for casting or lifting, we raise it with the engineer so the change is documented and approved.
As early as the architectural design allows, ideally before the permit set is finished. Panel widths drive crane picks, bracing, joints and the number of casting positions, so changing them late means changing all of those. We would rather settle the panel schedule in design development than redo shop drawings after steel is ordered.
Not necessarily. The state adopted the International Codes, but the City of Oklahoma City, among others, lists editions. Because the edition affects wind, seismic and fire criteria, we confirm it with the building department for each project.
A change before the panel is poured is a drawing revision. A change after the pour means coring or saw-cutting a cured panel, which needs engineer approval and sometimes added reinforcing around the new opening. We flag likely changes early and ask owners for final dock and door counts before casting starts.
Often yes. Fewer, larger panels reduce the number of picks, and consistent panel widths let the crew repeat the same rigging. The tradeoff is weight and the size of the crane, so we compare options during preconstruction rather than guessing.
Send the site, the building, the schedule and the decision you need to make, and we will set up a project review.
