ABC 2007 Excellence in Construction Award winners' project narratives

Erland Construction of Burlington, Mass. Babson College Undergraduate Dormitory in Wellesley, Mass. Narrative: The new Undergraduate Dormitory at Babson College is a $10.7 million, 55,000 s/f residence hall. The five-story, all brick structure was built into a hillside, has a curved façade, and was designed to mirror the architectural style of the rest of the buildings on campus. Built to satisfy the college's growing need for on-campus, undergraduate housing, the dorm accommodates 124 student beds in 31 apartment-style units, each containing four bedrooms as well as a shared bathroom, living room, and kitchenette. Seven of the units are ADA-compliant with full handicap accessibility. The dormitory also features student lounges, a lobby, and an office/two-bedroom residence for the resident director. It is a sustainable structure built to silver LEED™ specifications. While the school decided not to obtain official certification, Babson has taken a prominent step towards making green buildings the standard on their campus, thereby delivering the message that Babson cares about the environment and the health and well-being of its constituents. Performing approximately one percent of the labor, Erland completed this project in 12 months. Bowdoin construction Corp. of Needham Heights, Mass Southern New England Surgery Center Attleboro Mass. Narrative: The Southern New England Surgery Center (SNESC) project was conceived by Constitution Surgery Centers, represented by Kreg Palko, and a group of twenty-seven doctors. The ownership entity would be Southern New England Surgery Center, LLC, and their vision was to create one of the regions largest and most advanced ambulatory surgical centers to be used primarily for orthopedic surgeries and endoscopic procedures. The goals of the center were to enable a dedicated group of doctors to provide better quality service to their patients for outpatient surgeries, in an atmosphere that is more comforting and accommodating than a typical hospital setting. The schedule would be very aggressive, requiring a fast-track process under which construction would commence while design was still ongoing. The budget would also need to be kept under tight control, and Bowdoin would maintain a competitive process with three to five pre-qualified subcontractor proposals for every trade on the project. The subcontractor selection process was conducted on an open book basis with both owner and architect, and resulted in the hiring of eight ABC member firms. The fast tracked trade work began in November of 2006 and the remaining plans were finalized by early December. On December 13, 2006, Bowdoin provided SNESC, LLC with the Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) of $5,008,667and a project schedule of 165 calendar days, which committed the team to a required completion date of June 1, 2007. Piquette & Howard Electrical Service of Lawrence, Mass. TD Banknorth Gardern Boston, Mass. Narrative: This was very difficult project comprised of lowering and raising (4) 6000# deck mounted hoists 140' above the floor without the use of a mobile crane and all the safety aspects that surround that - no railings and even the smallest tool or object dropped could damage underfloor cooling system On a difficulty scale of 10 this project was a 15. We installed new monorails that had to be placed precisely due to the roof structure steel, the location of hoist platform, and head room. We actually had to measure all rigging gear and remove a section of toe plate from the hoist platform and ended up with only 2" of clearance. We also welded a lifting eye to our lifting beams which were mounted next to our monorail runway. As we made the lifts we actually had to rotate the hoist 90º parallel to the hoist deck to clear the building steel, then continue up another 40' at that point we had to transfer the load from the lifting beam to the monorail, roll the load back from hoist platform, turn the load 90° again to clear catwalk, lift another 10' or so and pull the load onto the hoist deck, reposition all rigging, re-pick the hoist/load and move into position on yet another beam. The RELCO Companies, Easton, Mass. Motorola, Inc. at Crosspoint Towers in Lowell, Mass. Narrative: Motorola Inc. of Illinois leased 193,000 s/f of office and lab space throughout four floors and three towers at the Cross Point Office Towers, Lowell, Mass., in an effort to consolidate several New England regional offices. Votze Butler Associates Inc. of Lowell, MA was the selected general contractor for this large scale fast-track project and awarded RELCO and RELCOM the five million dollar electrical and telecommunication contracts. The RELCO team fully self performed this unique schedule driven project in the extremely aggressive ten month schedule by efficiently staffing, designing and communicating the electrical and telecommunications scope of work for the offices and twelve lab spaces throughout the entire project cycle. Wayne J. Griffin Electric, Inc. Holliston, Mass. Cooley Dickinkinson Hospital Northamapton, Mass. Narrative: Cooley Dickinson Hospital offers a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services at its main campus in Northampton and serves towns in the western Hampshire and southern Franklin counties. In order to enhance patient care and services, the hospital executed a $60 million renovation and expansion project from April 2005 through March 2007, where Griffin Electric was contracted to provide all of the electrical installation work. The four-story, 116, 000 s/f building will house eight, 600 s/f operating rooms; the existing Operating Rooms each measure 349 s/f. The building will also contain a wing of 32 single-occupancy rooms for patients, an expanded Joint Replacement Center, a centralized laboratory and a central sterile processing unit. R&RWindow Contractors, Inc. Easthampton, Mass. Kimball Towers Burlington, Mass. Narrative: Designed by Sheskey Architects, the Kimball Woods project involved two new 170,000 s/f apartment buildings, connected by a parking garage. The apartment complex, located on Kimball Court in Woburn, Mass., is visible from Rte. 128 and overlooks the Boston Skyline. R & R fabricated all curtainwalls, panels, canopies, entrances and manufactured all the windows in their 30,000 s/f shop. R & R performed all of this work with their own forces including estimating, project management, engineering, production and installation. Builders Systems, Inc. Auburn Mass. Savers Bank at the Uxbridge Inn in Uxbridge Mass. Narrative: This project was the complete renovation of the Uxbridge Inn building in the center of Uxbridge, Mass. which is in the center of Blackstone Valley. The building is on the Register of National Historical Sites and was built in 1880. It's a 35,000 s/f four story wood framed structure that has been used as an inn, tavern, and other various businesses over the last 127 years. The building stands as a beacon in the center of the Blackstone Valley, an area that has lost much of its commerce and is struggling to recover. Builders Systems supplied conceptual budgeting as the design progressed, as well as suggestions as how to keep the other trades working while the phased structural work was ongoing. The company also has a Division of Capital Asset Management certification in Historical Building Renovation which helped with the historical aspects of the project. DECCO, Inc. in Brookline, NH Nuvera Fuel Cells Ronovation Billerica Mass. Narrative: When Nuvera Fuel Cells, an innovative manufacturer of alternative power sources, found themselves short on space and long on potential markets, they found the perfect space for their world headquarters, R&D facility, and manufacturing in Billerica, Mass. Nuvera and GC Erland Construction selected DECCO, Inc. to perform utilities and process piping within the 120,000 s/f facility. DECCO is used to challenging, mission impossible projects; we're known for them. But on the Nuvera site, the "this will never fit" job brought out a level of cooperation, enthusiasm, and mutual admiration among the project team that made our corporate chest swell with pride. Our mantra may be "Quality First", but it's our people who make that possible. DECCO, Inc. Brookline, NH Wyeth BioPharma Suite II REnovation Andover, Mass Narrative: With only seven months to renovate Suite II, Wyeth and Jacobs Field Services turned to DECCO for all mechanical and process utility piping. And, because of the aggressive schedule, the owner opted to ask DECCO to provide on-site, dedicated project management, procurement services, and fabrication for custom skids: chromatography, virus removal, ultrafiltration/diafiltration, and other filter skids. As the equipment engineer fleshed out designs, the DECCO teams provided ISO drawings and began the procurement process for specialty items with long lead times. The renovation part of the project included the following services to be supplied to the suite: process lines, WFI, CIP, process waste, compressed air, carbon dioxide, plant steam and condensate, chilled water, chilled glycol, hot water, and vents and drains. More than 10,500 feet of piping, 9,000 trade hours, and 4,000 hours of project management, project engineering, QA/QC, and supervision went into this complex project which began with the running of a few transfer lines. As the attached productivity chart shows, the slow start accelerated into a flat-out race to the finish. Every project has at least one challenge; that's to be expected in the demanding biopharmaceutical business. This project, however, had nothing but challenges, from a first time field fabrication of skids, to an accelerated renovation encompassing a design-as-you-go approach. Design/build may be the usual method; this project was build/design on an accelerated schedule and the end result left everyone smiling. Methuen Construction Co. Salem N.H. City of Attleboro Watewater Treatment Facility Attleboro, Mass. Narrative: The goal of the project was to make the Attleboro Facility compliant with the EPA's always improving quality standards for the next 20 years. This was accomplished by replacing 95% of the existing process equipment (130 individual components) as well as the replacement of the entire electrical distribution and control systems including; emergency backup generator, switchgear, transformers and SCADA. The project also included installation of an odor control system and numerous architectural improvements. The success of the Attleboro project depended upon a level of coordination between MC, CDM, and the treatment facility staff. Almost every piece of process equipment in the facility was replaced, all while maintaining flow and treatment levels required. Due to Methuen's, CDM's and Attleboro's ability to effectively work together to keep the project under budget, the City was able to utilize nearly $1.8m to fund additional capital improvements above the original scope of the project to further increase the facility's over all treatment performance and efficiency. Erland Construction, Burlington Mass. Kimball Towers Burlington, Mass. Narrative: Kimball Towers is a mixed-income rental apartment community of 256 units in two 10-story, steel-frame buildings connected by a 5-story precast parking garage with room for 350 cars. There are 50 additional surface spaces in the complex. It was developed as a "Friendly 40-B" project by the Mullins Co. and has a density of 100 units per acre. The owner had previously developed the larger, adjacent Kimball Court Apartments complex - 525 units in six 6-story buildings with 586 surface parking spaces - on a 30-acre parcel mostly situated in the city of Woburn, Mass. Despite the constrained site with the only access directly through the fully occupied Kimball Court complex, Erland completed the $47.189 million Kimball Tower project in 19 months. Between general conditions work and direct purchasing, Erland self-performed about 12% of the work on this project. EnviroVantage Epping, N.H. Mary Lyon Hall Restoration Plymouth State Univ., Plymouth N.H. Narrative: The Mary Lyon Dormitory at Plymouth State University was built back in 1915. It is 84,000 s/f in size, and houses almost a quarter of Plymouth State's undergraduates. It was an environmentally unfriendly residence hall, and EnviroVantage's task was to bring Mary Lyon Hall to the up to date building standards for final renovation by Pizzagalli Construction Co. Throughout this project, Enviro Vantage encountered a great deal of unexpected hardships resulting in over sixty change orders, but the company managed to stay right on schedule making the project completion a success. The unique design elements involved in this project were the confined work space, the multiple wings and floors, and the maze of underground tunnels that contained an immense amount of asbestos. The work conditions were harsh due to the hot summer weather and lack of electricity in the building. It was a difficult situation demanding careful planning and extra safety precautions. The RELCO Cos. Easton Mass. Fresenius Medical Care North America, Walthan, Mass. Narrative: Fresenius Medical Care North America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA. RELCOM fully self performed and completed this $1 million design/build project in an aggressive seven month schedule utilizing an in-house RCDD designer, CAD department and installation team.