The project includes ten new main steel and concrete structures to be built in the Lafito Free Trade Park in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The complex totals over 72,500 m² (780,000 ft²) and includes two high-performance clothing workshops, a general warehouse, two cafeterias, an office building, a utility building and three residential buildings.

The main challenges identified were to design steel members with a free span of more than 32 m (105 ft) in shop spaces, while meeting seismic loads of 1.587 g, equivalent to 2.5 times those of Montreal or 1.7 times those of Vancouver and 320 km/h (200 mi/h) hurricane wind loads while complying with the International Building Code (IBC) standard.

Technical challenges :

• Large roof surfaces requiring separation into multiple structures
• Very high seismic loads.
• Hurricane wind loads applied using the Florida Building Code / IBC for offshore sites.
• Long-span interior manufacturing areas combined with special architectural roof forms required outside-the box thinking for framing solutions.
• A variety of different building occupancies each requiring its own column grid, clear height, floor loading, and storey arrangements.
• Last-minute changes to the roof shapes required rapid adaptation of the structural framing.

Notable solutions and innovations :

• Optimized design of long-span plate-girder rigid frames to deal with high uplift forces.
• Integrated slab-on-grade and perimeter footing design reducing construction cost and schedule.
• Arrangement of roof framing creating continuous clerestory dormers that were used for natural ventilation of the building interiors.