MACTEC GARNERS AWARDS FOR TOP SEISMIC PROJECTS OF 20 TH CENTURY

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, April 18, 2006 – MACTEC Engineering & Consulting (MACTEC E&C) was recently honored by the Applied Technology Council (ATC) and Engineering News-Record for its contribution on seismic mitigation projects in the United States. At a recent event held in San Francisco that celebrated 100 years of seismic structural engineering and construction in the United States, MACTEC won recognition for its participation in two of the nine top seismic projects of the 20 th Century.

Bruce C. Coles, president of MACTEC E&C and chairman & CEO of MACTEC, Inc., the holding company (www.mactec.com), made the announcement.

The Applied Technology Council (ATC) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation established in 1973 through the efforts of the Structural Engineers Association of California. ATC develops and promotes state-of-the-art, user-friendly engineering resources and applications for use in mitigating the effects of natural and other hazards on the built environment. ATC also identifies and encourages needed research and develops consensus opinions on structural engineering issues in a nonproprietary format.

Engineering News-Record , a McGraw-Hill publication, has been providing contractors, engineers, architects and others involved in the construction industry with news for more than 130 years.

Capsule descriptions of the two winning projects:

Foothill Communities Law & Justice Center . The $30 million (1985 value), four-story building is 12 miles from the San Andreas fault in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. It was the first in the U.S. to have an innovative earthquake-resistant design to withstand a magnitude 8.3 earthquake. It has a full basement and a sub-basement for its base isolation system, an increasingly applied structural design technique used for buildings in highly seismic areas. The base isolation system consists of 98 isolators of multi-layered natural rubber bearings reinforced with steel plates. The superstructure of the building has a structural steel frame stiffened by braced frames in some bays. MACTEC provided geotechnical and seismic engineering services for the project, including selection of the design earthquake ground motions.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels . Standing in the midst of downtown Los Angeles and dedicated in 2002, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels serves the total Archdiocese of over four million Catholics. One of the most challenging requirements is for the Cathedral to withstand the test of time.   The project utilized advanced strategies to achieve a lifespan of no less than 500 years for the structure and building systems. The building has been designed to withstand large earthquakes and sits on base isolators, which means that the whole building can gently move about 24 inches in each direction during earthquakes. The subbasement with the isolator pads are covered by an overlapping site floor that will allow the building to move back and forwards during an earthquake. MACTEC was the geotechnical engineer for the project and provided the design ground motions.

MACTEC, based in Alpharetta, GA, is a $436 million environmental, engineering, construction management, and infrastructure services firm with 3,000 employees in over 100 offices nationwide.