The construction went like a clockwork because it had been organized carefully for maximum efficiency. As soon as final plans were drawn for the ground floors, orders went out to the steels mills for materials. Architects then drew plans for the next floor. The drawings for the 80th floor were not completed until the time the steel frame of the ground floor was being built.
The steel for the frame was poured and set into girders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With military precision the girders were then sped to a waterfront supply yard in Bayonne, New Jersey, hauled by barge to Manhattan, and trucked to the building site, lifted in bundles on cobweb-like cables, and set in place. Each beam was marked with its precise location in the giant frame. Often the whole process took a mere 80 hours.
Because of lack of storage space along the narrow New York sidewalks, the supplying of building materials had to be synchronized to fit precisely with the [L3 425 / pace of construction]. Everything possible - windows, [G 14 / spandrels], steel strips, even slabs of stone - was fabricated at the site of origin in cities around the country, indeed around the world, and shipped in quantity to be installed, as if on an assembly line, without further hand fitting or stone cutting. Today the Japanese are noted for this super-efficient approach to manufacturing, known as kanban, in which
needed parts arrive at the factory just in time to be assembled into the final product.
[L3 426 / Trucks drove into the Empire State Building site] at ground level and unloaded the materials - everything but the steel, which was handled by hoists - into 20 rail cars. The cars glided on tracks on to specially designed temporary elevators, which carried them to the proper floors. Tracks, shunts and turntables had been installed on each floor - the materials were deposited right at the worker's elbows. The system was orderly and safe; it kept wastage to a minimum and allowed New York to get on with its business without blocked streets or sidewalks.
