Sangren Hall is set to be completed in Fall 2011, with the remainder of site work to be completed early in 2012. PHOTO & RENDERING COURTESY OF MILLER DAVIS

Western Michigan University takes cradle-to-cradle thinking to buildings with total cost of ownership model

By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
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KALAMAZOO — What will Western Michigan University look like in 60 years? 70 years?

That is the question university officials, architects, and the construction team are looking to answer as the north portion of Sangren Hall comes crumbling down. The $68 million building will house the School of Education and classrooms used by many WMU students. The existing Sangren Hall was among the most used buildings on campus and its replacement is designed with years of heavy use and renovations in mind.

Planning for the building is being done through a long lens — looking ahead to the operations, maintenance and the eventual demolition of the building, a process known as “total cost of ownership.” Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a way for building owners to take into account all of the costs associated with a building throughout its lifecycle.

While taking TCO into construction planning doesn’t make sense in every case, it does for WMU for buildings that are expected to have a lifetime stretching 70 years or more, Peter Strazdas, associate VP for facilities management, told MiBiz in his office on the second floor of the physical plant building, itself one of the older buildings on WMU’s main campus.

“Total cost of ownership is not really a new trend, though it is gaining a lot of ground. It’s really just an extension of LEED. This is cradle-to-cradle thinking for the construction industry and how we are going to reuse those materials at the end of the building’s life,” Strazdas said. “Just 5 percent of the total costs associated with a building are in the design and construction of the building, meaning 95 percent of the cost is in the operation and maintenance of the building. If you put in a little more in the short-term, you find you will save a lot more over the life of the building.”

With the long-term maintenance and renovation of university facilities in mind, WMU is constructing a BIM (building information modeling) map of all of the university’s buildings, with the help of Kalamazoo-based construction support services provider Kal-Blue. Interns are building 200 level models of all of the campus’s 150 buildings, which include building out the 2-D drawings of building floor plans into 3-D models, but do not include any HVAC or electrical systems. The modeling will assist WMU in future maintenance and renovations, said Strazdas.

“Buildings, like cars, are getting more and more sophisticated. Techs are spending more and more time looking for info on the systems in place in our buildings,” Strazdas said. “BIM helps us avoid some of that, and will give us access to information needed to maintain the buildings over the next 50 to 100 years.”

The building was designed by SHW Architecture of Detroit and construction manager for the project is Kalamazoo-based Miller-Davis.

Decisions about materials and systems used in new construction often center on short-term cost considerations, said Strazdas. While carpet might be the cheaper product over the short term, it has to be replaced every seven or eight years. More durable materials, like terrazzo, are at a higher cost, but have greater durability and lower maintenance costs. The same is true for mechanical systems.

The university has taken into account the maintenance and replacement schedules for major systems, such as chiller units for the HVAC equipment, and negotiated long-term service agreements and reduced prices for replacement parts.

“Over 60 years, that carpeting is going to be changed at least seven times. That’s material headed to the landfill. Terrazzo is more expensive, but you have less cleaning and maintenance costs,” Strazdas said.

Demolition of the southern side of the building will be completed in summer 2010, with the north side housing offices and some classrooms until the new building will be completed in fall 2012. The job site will be extremely tight, with the new construction occurring at some points just 15 feet from the existing building, said Michele Wreggelsworth, project manager at Miller-Davis.

“The biggest thing we want to do is give value to the owner. We want to understand needs, goals and desires for the building and incorporate that into construction. We build what the architects give us,” Wreggelsworth told MiBiz. “We get a little bit of both sides of the coin. We really try, as we do installations from the field side, to look at long-term maintenance, as we look at drawings. Items such as access to valves are all the things that provide value to owners down the line.”