 |
 |
||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Order Reprints
Follow @MiBiz
 |
|
The City of East Grand Rapids chose Wolverine Building Group for the renovation of its Department of Public Works facility, the city’s first design-build project. RENDERING COURTESY OF WOLVERINE BUILDING |
By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
EAST GRAND RAPIDS — Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.
In a time of strained budgets and dwindling state revenue sharing heading to local governments, design-build capability is proving a means of conserving valuable financial resources while reducing the timeline for building projects for the city of East Grand Rapids.
The city started work on a $1.3 million expansion of its Department of Public Works this summer, its first using the design-build model, said Ken Feldt, director of city services.
“We went into it with the expectation we would do three things: expedite the process, limit the differences (in the design) between traditional architect versus the builder, and minimize the costs for the design services,” Feldt told MiBiz. “That is why we went into it, and we feel we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.”
Wolverine Building was the architect and is handling construction management of the project. The 6,000-square-foot expansion will allow more efficient storage of the city’s vehicles and public works machinery. Wolverine has been working in the design-build realm for three decades on industrial projects — it is fairly recent that the rest of the construction industry has started incorporating design into the construction management field, said Wolverine’s in-house architect, Gordon Jendritz.
“We’ve been doing it on industrial projects for 30 years. We are unique in that way,” Jendritz said. “We are now taking that expertise and moving into different building types.”
Design-build capability is fast becoming a prequalification criteria required to bid on public projects. “More municipalities are moving in that direction. Clients are becoming more savvy,” said Brandon Hartel, Wolverine’s project manager on the East Grand Rapids build. Design-build allows a more seamless transition between the architectural renderings and construction teams in the field, as Jendritz understands Wolverine’s estimating procedures and makes budgeting for the project easier. “It gives us more bang for the buck on these projects.”
East Grand Rapids recently completed a renovation of its city hall, and design and construction management fees approached 20 percent of the total cost. For more utilitarian buildings, design-build capability is a cost-saver for the city, Feldt told MiBiz.
“This was not a very sophisticated project. It is not like we needed a lot of creative design work for the space. In the future, I’m sure we will use a separate architectural firm again, but we don’t have a lot of building projects on the drawing board at this point,” Feldt said. “I think so far, we’ve been really pleased with how things are going. The design fee has become nominal at this point as it is rolled into the construction costs.”
Feldt credits Wolverine’s design-build capability and creative planning with shaving nearly five months off the construction schedule. The city had originally planned on completing the project in phases to allow the city’s public works crews to continue their work in portions of the existing 17,200 square-foot building. Wolverine moved the department’s offices into a temporary trailer onsite, allowing construction to continue uninterrupted throughout the summer and fall.
“The building will be substantially completed in December. That was one of the cool things about doing this. By working with a design-builder, we could save a lot of time,” Feldt said. “We had proposed in the RFP that we would build in phases, so that our department could continue our operations. Wolverine moved us into trailers and they furnished them, so we agreed to that, so we would we get done substantially more quickly. We’re seeing time savings of around 40 percent. It is worth the hassles of having our crew living in a trailer. We have moved the project completion date ahead by almost five months.”
We take our search engine experience so much for granted that it can be hard to see with clear eyes. Consider this: The dead-simple process of googling something actually has four distinct phases. First, you arrive at the URL and[…]
Ever wonder what unfinished plans you’ll leave behind when you’re gone? (Besides student debt and overdue library books, of course.) Charlotte Perriand saw many of her designs mass-produced on a global scale over the course of her long, accomplished life.[…]
As the world gears up for the London Olympics in July, media chatter about the unprecedented expense and trouble of hosting the Games--which are no longer a surefire investment for cities--is increasing.
Perhaps no city better illustrates the fraught host[…]
Benoit Paille is a portraitist. "I hate landscape," says the photographer, who has built a career pursuing human subjects. Paille’s remarkable portraits of attendees at an alternative lifestyle festival called the Rainbow Gathering have been published widely, and The Stranger[…]