Project Profile: Cheltenham Veterans’ Cemetery
Cheltenham Veterans’ Cemetery
Scope of work: Expansion of cemetery, building construction/renovations and infrastructure upgrades
BC&E Member companies involved: Whitney Bailey Cox & Magnani, LLC (WBCM), Colimore Architects
Developed in 1978, Maryland’s most active veterans’ cemetery was in need of major upgrades. Designed to support 40 years of burials, Cheltenham Veterans’ Cemetery near Upper Marlboro was running out of capacity and its aging buildings, roadways and utilities needed renovations or complete replacement.
WBCM developed an intricate, phased, four-year construction plan to add 6,500 gravesites with 6,000 pre-placed crypts, three new above-ground columbarium units totaling 448 niches and 1,300 in-ground cremains sites. As part of the 10-acre cemetery expansion, crews would also demolish the original administration building and construct a new 3,133-square-foot replacement structure, complete a gut renovation of a 6,300-square-foot maintenance building, and construct a new bulk material storage building, vehicle storage building and fuel island/canopy and dispensing system. Crews would upgrade the cemetery’s entire roadway system to meet current federal guidelines, install a new irrigation system and landscaping, upgrade gas and electrical services, connect buildings to public sewer lines and decommission the onsite sewage disposal system.
The project would also tackle the extraordinarily difficult task of managing stormwater on a cemetery.
“Cemeteries are a challenge when it comes to handling stormwater management because they are always digging grave pits and a lot of dirt comes off the site so you have to design a stormwater management system that can handle that sediment load and treat the water that comes off the site effectively,” said Blaine Linkous, Senior Vice President, Civil Engineering – Site and Utilities at WBCM. “Instead of designing a filtration system that could potentially clog, we designed shallow wetlands for extended stormwater detention that would take a lot of that suspended sediment out of the runoff.”
Other treatment practices in the innovative system included infiltration, bioretention, reinforced turf as well as facilities for spill containment and management of surplus soils. In the course of designing and creating the stormwater system, the project team also retrofitted two failing ponds onsite to treat stormwater – a move that lessened the burden on maintenance staff.
The project team had to organize and complete the massive renovation in “bite-sized chunks,” Linkous said, to ensure work meshed with funding schedules under two Veterans Administration grants and avoided any impact to ongoing operations of the cemetery which conducts 1,000 burials a year. “I am really proud to serve veterans in this way,” he said. “It is an honor to take care of them and their families after they have served us and kept us safe.”
Member News: October 2022
LEGO, K’NEX model becomes construction safety tool
Standing inside a model built of LEGO and K’NEX, a tiny LEGO man wearing a helmet and wielding a sword became a highly unusual but equally effective tool for safely completing an extraordinary job.
The model was the creation of John Frank, team leader for The Crew Works staff who were tasked to replace the bird wire that covers the top of the Upland Tropical Rainforest exhibit within the glass pyramid at Baltimore’s National Aquarium. The Crew Works is a subcontractor to Plano-Coudon Construction, which was contracted to replace the 684 panes of glass in the pyramid and complete other upgrades.
“We had looked at different ways of replacing the bird wire,” said Andrew Hooker, Project Executive. “Building scaffolding in there would have been extremely costly and would have entailed cutting down most of the trees, so that wasn’t an option.”
Instead, Plano-Coudon contracted The Crew Works, a company that more commonly does rigging for events in entertainment venues, to install the new bird wire.
“Their crew would climb the trusses inside the pyramid, tie off with safety lines and perform the work from there,” Hooker said.
However, the unique and complex structure combined with the challenge of installing wire mesh beneath a sloped, glass ceiling would require some uncommon safety and operational planning.
“Trying to describe the process verbally to the team was going to be very difficult. Even taking them inside the rainforest and pointing to things was going to be difficult because of all the trees and other obstructions,” Frank said.
So Frank built a scale model of the pyramid’s skylight structure. Outfitted with rigging and safety cables, a spool of wire mesh, a wench system and LEGO men to represent each crew member, the model served both as an effective way to demonstrate to crew members how the installation would happen and for the crew to refine that plan in the first days of the installation.
“It was a wild process to watch,” Hooker said. “Their crew members were hanging from the trusses doing the installation. They also kept the model just outside the rainforest exhibit and they would work out possible changes in their operations on that model.”
Construction Inclusion Week aims to build a more diverse industry
With a plethora of resources about workplace culture, supplier diversity, community engagement and commitments to equity, the second annual Construction Inclusion Week October 17-21 is aiming to involve more construction leaders and workers in efforts to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across the industry.
Modeled after Construction Safety Week, Construction Inclusion Week (CIW) provides materials for toolbox talks focused on a different theme each day. It heightens awareness online and on job sites, and gives participants access to numerous other resources, such as podcasts, movies and suggested activities.
“We saw how Construction Safety Week changed how the industry thought about safety. It changed our safety performance and our metrics. Why can’t we do that with diversity, inclusion and equity in the same industry?” said Tiara Cypress, a member of DPR Construction’s global social responsibility team. DPR is co-chair of the 2022 Construction Inclusion Week.
Organizers have generated daily curriculum for companies with all different levels of understanding of DEI. They added tools to make the material easy to use, such as a facilitator’s guide and an assessment tool to help companies determine which materials would work best for them.
Organizers tailored this year’s daily themes to focus on positive actions that companies and individuals can take. They also proposed a model to make CIW activities attractive and accessible to more participants. Organizers suggest that companies host a breakfast, give out CIW swag and conduct a short (less than 30 minutes) toolbox talk. In addition, DPR and some other general contractors are inviting trade partners and clients to those events.
“Maybe you’re a 10-person electrical company. You don’t know what to do or where to start and you don’t feel comfortable doing this alone,” Cypress said. “Well, we have opportunities for you to tap into other companies’ activities. We will invite you to breakfast and buy you swag. You just have to show up with an open mind and a courageous heart.”
Organizers hope that the conversations that begin at CIW events will continue long after the week ends.
“These are brave conversations that people are going to have. Be prepared for it. Be excited about it,” Cypress said. “Know that these conversations can lead to good things. Inclusive workplaces are more productive and they are a great foundation for the success of a company.”
BC&E welcomes new member
Headquartered in Bel Air, Spartan Surfaces is a specialty flooring supplier serving 70 percent of the United States. Dedicated to delivering great products that meet clients’ aesthetics, budgets and performance needs, Spartan is active in the healthcare, education, corporate, retail, multi-family, hospitality, senior living and sport and fitness markets. www.spartansurfaces.com
Designers, manufacturers begin to tackle embodied carbon
When he first read about MEP 2040, the challenge to system engineers to achieve net zero operational carbon on their projects by 2030 and net zero embodied carbon by 2040, Alexander Stough was stunned.
“I was flat-lined. I thought that’s impossible. I know how to do those calculations and it’s impractical.” said Stough, a mechanical associate with James Posey Associates (JPA).
But several days of thought and conversations with colleagues changed Stough’s mind.
“MEP 2040 actually does a really good job at laying out a process and tangible steps to move the needle in the right direction. It formalizes where the industry is already heading,” he said. “We can do this. It will take a long time but we will get there.”
Embodied carbon – the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with building construction, including extracting, manufacturing, transporting and installing materials, as well as emissions from ongoing maintenance – has not been a topic of discussion on most projects before now. However, LEED, the Living Building Challenge and other sustainability standards have gradually fostered demand for low-carbon architectural products. Industry associations have launched initiatives, such as the MEP 2040 Challenge, the AIA 2030 Commitment to carbon neutrality and ASHRAE’s position that new construction should lower its total GHG by half (compared to 2015) and cut embodied carbon 40 percent by 2030. This summer, members of the International Code Council Standards Development Committee began analyzing multiple proposals to add embodied carbon provisions to the next version of the Commercial Energy Code.
Gradually, this trend is requiring architects, systems engineers and other construction professionals to become more aware of the opportunities and obstacles to lowering embodied carbon in future projects.
“The big change is that embodied carbon is now a mainstream concept where it wasn’t just a few years ago,” said Wes Sullens, LEED Director at the U.S. Green Building Council and an expert on the carbon impact of building systems, architectural products and construction processes. “It’s a whole new field for many designers and engineers.”
It took nearly a decade, but LEED has motivated some manufacturers to develop Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) – especially for floor coverings, wall coverings, plastics and nylon projects – and gradually add more low-carbon products to their offerings, Sullens said.
Mechanical and electrical manufacturers may be about to follow suit.
Recently, a lighting manufacturer met with JPA staff to discuss its plan to begin adding environmental labeling to its products – a response to Declare 2.0, a sustainability information initiative by the Living Building Challenge.
“It will be similar to the ingredients label you find on a box of food, but it breaks down environmental impacts,” said Patrick Morgan, an electrical associate with JPA. “We are going to see a lot of standardization over the next few years of how sustainable products are labeled with carbon in mind.”
“We are on the cusp of this happening with MEP equipment,” Stough said. “Manufacturers are actively trying to improve their sustainability and, coincidentally, that results in lower embodied carbon for the equipment they are producing. There has been a sea change in the past couple of years to where this is becoming second nature in the design process. Daikin has made strides in their manufacturing to reduce energy waste and toxic water generation… The next logical step for them is to develop these Environmental Product Declarations where they can tout the fact that they are developing sustainably conscious products.”
Achieving the kinds of sustainability goals laid out in MEP 2040 and elsewhere, however, will require more than environmental impact labels.
“The problem is it doesn’t make financial sense for manufacturers to make certain changes such as converting their factories and doing research to bring us to the next generation of efficiency,” Stough said.
Government incentives and sustainable purchasing requirements as well as some code changes might be needed to support those changes in the industry.
For example, “Daikin is leading the research and development of new sustainable refrigerants that will have lower global warming potential,” Stough said, “but they are waiting on code adoption for the next generation of refrigerants.”
Extraordinary challenges and timelines face succession plans
Although it happened nearly five years ago, Jonathan Goetz clearly remembers the day that Oak Contracting President Doug Eder appeared unexpectedly on a job site that Goetz was managing.
“He said he was there to take me to lunch and that we needed to talk,” Goetz said. “Of course, I was immediately on edge, thinking oh boy what did I do now.”
The lunchtime discussion, however, revolved not around a problem, but an opportunity. Eder and his partners had been discussing their eventual retirement and a succession plan. He wanted to know if Goetz would be interested in stepping up into a leadership and ownership role.
Over the next four and a half years, Goetz, who is currently Oak’s Director of Business Development, gradually assumed greater responsibilities within the company, learned new aspects of the business and participated in countless open-door, open-book discussions with Eder. This summer, Oak announced that Goetz will succeed Eder as president on New Year’s Day 2024.
Planning and completing a succession plan is one of the most complex tasks a construction company can tackle. Successfully completing that transition requires extremely long-term planning, farsighted talent development practices, and solutions to thorny questions about the valuation, branding and future of the company. A well-executed succession, however, is critical to a company’s survival and a challenge that will face growing numbers of businesses in the near future as Baby Boomers age out of the workforce.
Value, brand and other hurdles
“This activity is not for the faint of heart,” said Brandon Jones, CEO of Delbert Adams Construction Group. “It becomes very, very complicated with a lot of legal issues, tax issues, branding questions and other topics that are over the heads of many general contractors and business owners.”
Chairman and Partner Delbert Adams put the company’s current succession plan into motion about seven years ago when he began talking to Jones, an employee since 2008, about possibly becoming a partner. The ensuing three years of planning “was a long road with a lot of conversations and it was all very delicate and very sensitive,” Jones said.
A core and challenging topic was resolving “how much is the company worth,” Jones said. “One can say it’s worth four times EBITA. Someone else can say it’s worth nothing without the founder. Someone else might say it’s worth the value of its trucks. This is a tricky question for any construction company.”
To navigate valuation and other challenges, Delbert Adams Construction Group retained a corporate advisor which specialized in mergers and acquisitions. On January 1, 2018, Jones became the third partner in the company, freeing Adams to retire but not for several more years.
“I have had the good fortune of having spent so much time here and incrementally elevated myself in this business. I had been put into positions where I was a department head, I ran business units, I took on a client-facing leadership role, and I learned about how the financials work and how taxation works for the company,” Jones said. “We have been able to take advantage of a long overlap to build up a knowledge base.”
Yet the succession would require Adams to remain active in the company, although at a gradually diminished level, while Jones and others assessed how his departure would impact the company’s brand and operations, and developed plans to address those changing conditions.
“I am looking at marketing metrics, looking at where our leads and opportunities come from, and what is the volume that comes from our marketing efforts versus the volume that comes from calls to Delbert’s cell phone,” Jones said.
The succession process, he added, would also need to address fundamental and looming changes in the marketplace — such as how shifting demographics are changing residential construction trends, changes in the way clients want to interact with contractors and the evolution of construction processes and marketing standards.
“The world and the industry are going to be different in 10 years,” Jones said. “For succession planning to be a success, it has to be forward-looking and consider what the business looks like in the future and how we will operate in the future.”
The power of continuous learning
Furthermore, succession plans can’t exclusively focus on C-suite positions. After weathering some staff challenges brought on by retirements, Cole Roofing expanded its succession planning to cover a broader range of positions.
“We are dealing with succession at all levels of the company – estimators, project managers, controller, lead mechanic, field supervision,” said Jim Layman, Vice President of Construction. “The more specialized the skill set you are trying to replace, the earlier the planning and the search for a successor needs to start.”
Cole’s human resources department helps determine that schedule by conducting yearly engagement conversations with all employees. For some of those employees, they take the opportunity to identify and discuss their likely retirement dates. Increasingly, Cole’s succession plans involve training up-and-coming staff to eventually advance into those positions.
For higher-level positions, such as controller or vice president, “you want the person who is going to take over to have a decent amount of time with the person currently in that role,” Layman said.
Although he is at least 10 years away from retirement, Layman has already identified his second in command and started activities that will help that person learn the vice president’s job. Those include creating a “playbook” for the job that describes duties, responsibilities, reporting requirements and key business analytics. The process also includes giving the would-be successor added responsibilities, including them in some executive activities and holding one-on-one meetings every other week.
In addition to training skilled successors, the process of promoting from within gives Cole an advantage within a highly competitive labor market, Layman said.
“When people see there is personal job growth potential within the company, that makes you a more attractive employer,” he said. “Even having conversations with the people you have identified as the second in command in different departments will give them assurance that they haven’t hit a ceiling.”
At Oak Contracting, that process of continuous learning and helping employees advance their careers has been key to the company’s succession planning, said President Doug Eder. As he prepared to become president years ago, Eder embarked on a process of learning the less-familiar operations of the company.
“I asked questions of everybody: the accounting staff, project managers, marketing people, owners, architects, competitors, my partners. I became a real pest to some employees but they shared their expertise and intuition with me,” he said.
Supporting that open communication and continuous learning throughout the staff has helped Oak develop and retain great talent, easily identify key successors and avoid one hazard of succession, namely an abrupt change in operations or culture post-succession that can damage a company, Eder said.
“If your company is going to continue to succeed, you don’t want to bring in strangers to run your company,” he said. “Jonathan and his partners have been with Oak for 15 years or more. They know what Oak is, how we do things, what our philosophies are. That continuity of Oakies running this place will be good for this company.”
Greening the Classroom: K-12 projects dominate sustainability awards
K-12 schools have something new to teach us.
In this year’s USGBC Maryland Community Leader Awards, grade schools accounted for six of the nine finalists. The projects – Crofton High School, Graceland Park/O’Donnell Heights Elementary/Middle School, Havre de Grace Middle/High School, Holabird Academy, Mother Mary Lange Catholic School and Patuxent Valley Middle School – included an array of sustainable features and some standout achievements.
Both Graceland/O’Donnell Heights and Holabird Academy achieved LEED Platinum certification and operate as net zero energy schools. The Baltimore City schools, which have identical, 94,000-square-foot floorplans, have extremely energy-efficient design, insulated concrete form walls, geothermal energy, demand control ventilation with centralized DOAS, a carbon dioxide sensor suite for fresh air, optimized daylighting, and more than 1,300 photovoltaic panels each on their roofs, including demonstration panels that are part of the schools’ STEM education program.
“The most impressive aspect to me was all the PV solar that was put on those buildings,” said Nick Wilson, Associate Principal at MK Consulting Engineers, which worked on both the Holabird and Graceland/O’Donnell projects. “I have worked on hundreds of school projects. Holabird was the first one I had seen with that much PV solar in the Baltimore area.”
Trends in school design indicate that project teams will be seeing more K-12 projects that include infrastructure for rooftop solar and other leading, sustainability features.
“In the K-12 school market, you don’t often see people jump to the front and try something innovative,” Wilson said. “But in the past three years, we have definitely heard more interest in doing PV solar. Now educators from other areas are touring Holabird and Graceland/O’Donnell and getting excited about it. We are doing a couple of projects in Anne Arundel County right now and they have had some talks about beefing up their roof design to support PV solar.”
GWWO Architects has also seen a trend of K-12 clients growing increasingly interested in outfitting new schools with infrastructure that would support rooftop solar, said Gretchen Wagner, Senior Associate. Furthermore, it’s part of a broader trend of K-12 clients seeking and evaluating highly efficient design, net zero energy possibilities, and long-term cost implications of design decisions.
“We’re seeing clients tracking energy and water use in new ways,” Wagner said. “They are pulling and analyzing consumption data across their facilities. There is a big movement where people are understanding quality design as a way to reduce operational costs. They are thinking about energy use intensity [EUI] and how design decisions can lower their lifecycle costs.”
While designing Crofton High School, GWWO worked with the project’s MEP team to do extensive modeling of how choices about building orientation, envelope, window-to-wall ratio, insulation, daylighting and other elements would impact EUI, MEP equipment, project costs and operating costs.
“Ultimately, it’s a balance to deliver quality education spaces that are also very energy efficient,” Wagner said. “We learned a lot of lessons from this project about small changes that can result in equipment and energy savings that we carried into our next projects and lessons about how to perform these analyses and advance the design further.”
While balancing the needs for quality space, high efficiency and manageable budgets depend on thorough analyses and practical measures, sometimes project teams find an artful solution to a design challenge. The design for Crofton High School, which is set in a community park, included large expanses of curtainwall to provide daylighting and views of the beautiful surroundings. But the design team had to balance that design feature with the need to limit solar gain. The solution was fritted glass, designed specifically for that school.
“We designed the pattern to deliver the right solar heat gain coefficient,” Wagner said. “We also looked at biophilic design principles so that the fritted pattern evokes imagery of leaves falling. When sunlight shines through it, a leaf pattern projects onto the school’s floors and creates a natural feel.”
Small, diverse contractors face new opportunities, old hurdles
As they prepared to start work on the Nationals’ baseball stadium, executives at Clark Construction confronted a seemingly impossible requirement. On a $300-million-plus development, participation by small, minority- and women-owned companies would have to reach 50 percent.
“We realized it was going to be very, very difficult to meet the 50 percent small, diverse business goal on that project,” said Wes Stith, Senior Vice President of Purchasing for Clark. “We could either fall back on best efforts or we could try to solve the problem and help build capacity.”
Clark began talking with small, diverse companies about the biggest challenges they faced in growing their businesses. Clark blended that input with insights from construction industry experts and Dr. Leonard Greenhalgh, Director of Programs for Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, to create the Strategic Partnership Program (SPP) – a free, 10-month, MBA-style program for small, diverse businesses. It focuses on increasing business leaders’ skills in five key areas: capabilities, terms and conditions of contracts, true scope of work, schedules and pricing.
In the short term, that initiative enabled Clark to achieve 51 percent small, diverse participation on the stadium project. Over the next 15 years, Clark expanded SPP to seven markets (including Baltimore), graduated more than 1,500 business leaders, contracted more than $1 billion to SPP graduates and facilitated major growth in some diverse businesses.
“We had a woman-owned company who when she started in the program, her revenue was about $500,000. Today, her revenue is at $15 million,” Stith said.
Heightened commitment by governments, institutions and corporations to diverse contracting along with expanded outreach and educational programming by companies, such as Clark Construction, have created more opportunities for small, diverse contractors and suppliers.
Those measures, however, haven’t leveled the competitive playing field in the construction industry. Small, diverse companies still face inordinate challenges when it comes to financing, bonding and business development. And diverse contracting initiatives don’t always generate good business opportunities. Diverse and mainstream contractors, however, say the industry has opportunities to improve the situation and foster a successful, more diversified business landscape.
Financial hurdles
For small, diverse companies, “the largest challenge is being able to scale up both financing requirements and bonding requirements,” said Wayne Frazier Sr., President of the Maryland Washington Minority Companies Association (MWMCA). “Folks can get financing on the street but at 15 to 20 percent interest. That eliminates your profit.”
When Joshua Matthews founded JCM Control Systems in the 1980s, he had to expand his search for financing all the way to Texas in order to secure bonding “and I still had to sign my life away with the indemnity agreement,” he said.
Because of those challenges, many small companies find it difficult – and sometimes impossible – to successfully manage finances during the early months of construction projects. Any error in their first invoice could result in first payment being delayed until 90 days into the project and “some companies could be six months into a project before they catch up on payments,” Frazier said.
Running out of money and defaulting on a project in those early months can lead to devastating consequences for a small firm.
“You get a lot of minority subs who default within the first 60 days because they don’t have enough money to carry the project beyond that,” Frazier said. “In those cases, the prime will keep the money that the sub has billed plus they may back charge the sub for failure to perform and for the cost of bringing in a replacement which could be a charge of $30,000 or more. It’s heartbreaking. You could be talking about potential bankruptcy.”
Changes in how construction budgets are managed, he said, could help small, minority contractors successfully navigate those financial challenges. In particular, weekly invoicing and mobilization funds would help small contractors.
“When you take on a project, you have to set up a staging area, maybe a trailer and fencing,” Frazier said. “If funds could be advanced to cover those initial reimbursables – not even money that goes into the pocket of the minority business owner – that could be a big help.”
Certification programs
Becoming certified as a small, diverse firm under the myriad of contracting programs operated by governments, institutions and some corporations can open up business opportunities. JCM’s success and growth as an HVAC contractor was driven partly by the company’s decision to gain 8a certification and pursue prime contracts, Matthews said.
But building a business based on small, diversified contracting programs isn’t easy and it isn’t guaranteed to succeed.
“I will be brutally honest. The big initiatives to do more business with women-owned companies are not what they appear behind the scenes,” said Annette Walter, President and CEO of Timber Industries.
Walter’s company has secured multiple certifications as a small, diverse contractor “and I think it is necessary to have the certifications,” she said. “It can be a great channel for business development and, when you start to win larger government contracts, it certainly pays off.”
But there are hitches. Obtaining and maintaining certifications is challenging and time-consuming. Timber Industries devotes a full-time staffer to that task. Firms must register on the individual contracting portals of each government agency, institution and corporation, and then sometimes encounter conflicting priorities within those organizations that ultimately stymy diverse contracting goals.
“I never lead with the fact that we are a woman-owned business. Whenever I have done that in the past, it seems to make the process of getting business more difficult. We like to earn the business then let them know they can check the box,” said Walter, who estimates that just five percent of her revenue is connected to her small, woman-owned enterprise certifications.
Walter, who also provides coaching services to business owners, urges entrepreneurs to carefully weigh the effort required to maintain certifications against the type and quantity of contracts that could result from that effort. She also urges small, diverse companies not to base their business plans solely around certification programs.
Growth opportunities
Amid all those challenges, one approach that has generated positive results is networking, mentoring and education.
“There are two ways to learn – either from mentorship or mistakes,” Matthews said. Growing any company “gets easier when you meet people who want you to succeed and help you to learn more about the contracting landscape. Gary Berger at HMS [Insurance Associates] became one of my biggest supporters and has been a big asset to JCM for 37 years.”
“Probably the biggest gift that has come to minority businesses is super GCs – like Whiting-Turner, Hensel Phelps, Turner and Clark Construction – going out of their way to ensure minority contractors learn about their projects, meet project executives, and learn about design requirements so they can develop pricing models that are consistent with final costs,” Frazier said. “Education and connection are the key elements to success.”
Clark Construction executives say that partnership can happen in daily activities, not only through special initiatives like the SPP.
“We make a genuine commitment to partner with and mentor companies to make sure they are an integral part of the team so that in addition to performing a scope of work on a project, they are growing their capabilities,” said Jay Grauberger, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Clark. “We want to make each project experience a growth opportunity.”
Project Profile: Druid Hill Park Pool
Scope of work: Renovation, expansion of city pool
BC&E Member companies involved: Baumgartner, Diversified Safety Services, Froehling & Robertson, G.H. Nitzel, GWWO Architects, Hatzel & Buehler, IronShore Contracting, MK Consulting Engineers, Plano-Coudon Construction
More than two years of specialized construction work undoubtedly made crowds of Baltimoreans happy in July when temperatures soared into the 90s. The renovated and dramatically improved Druid Hill Park Pool had reopened just in time for the summer.
The new facility features a competition-sized pool, a kids’ pool, water tables for small children and several water-park-style amenities, including three water slides, several water-spray features, basketball hoops within the pool and a 16-foot-high rock climbing wall that lets climbers jump off into the water.
However, creating those facilities, along with new locker/shower rooms and offices, was a complex undertaking.
“There were unknown things everywhere on that site,” said Thomas Lotz, Superintendent at Plano-Coudon Construction.
The pool, which was originally built in the 1890s, had gone through multiple iterations over the decades and those projects had left some surprises in their wake. When crews began the partial demolition of the existing 1980s lap pool, they discovered additional pool decks, walls and floors (likely from the 1950s and the turn of the century) hidden beneath. In addition to increasing the demolition work, the discoveries generated some structural issues. To build the new pool to competition size, crews had to remove previous pool flooring.
“But that meant your pool walls wouldn’t be supported. They would be basically dangling in the air,” said Ethan High, Project Engineer at Plano-Coudon. To stabilize the walls, “we had to make a two-foot by 1.5-foot pier about every six feet that would rest beneath the pool wall and hold it while we demo-ed the old pool floor, put in new drains and gravel, and repoured the floor.”
Work to install a backup drain for the pool was interrupted when crews “broke through a 30-inch stormwater line which wasn’t shown on any drawings,” Lotz said.
Even construction of a building to house locker rooms and showers presented a challenge.
“We had to remove seven feet of soil within the building footprint because it was junk fill that had been put there years ago,” Lotz said. “It was hundreds of truckloads of soil hauled out and new soil brought in just to get us back to square one. We spent weeks just moving soil.”
The efforts, however, created an oasis in the middle of a hot city. The project, which included 80,000 square feet of concrete, even included “a SunDek texture which is non-slip and keeps the pool deck 10 degrees cooler than typical concrete,” High said. “The colors and design that went into the pool deck are also super cool.”
Young members create new BC&E group
The Building Congress & Exchange has started a new group geared towards engaging and recruiting younger members in the construction industry. Led by Chair Schyler Bailey, an Associate at Bowie & Jensen, the BC&E Young Professionals Group (YPG) is in direct response to member companies’ requests to provide unique opportunities for their developing leaders.
The group, established this summer, is made up of individuals in the construction industry focused on creating an environment for professionals under 35 to make connections and grow together, while also working to help advance construction in the 21st century. This includes education in areas of construction outside their immediate job duties to help them better succeed professionally and individually, giving back to the community, providing mentorship and increasing opportunities to make connections.
YPG’s first event was an informal gathering at Port Covington prior the BC&E Mid-Summer Mingle on July 14. They received a unique behind-the-scenes look at a portion of the massive construction project. Thanks to the Whiting Turner Contracting Co. for coordinating.
If you have employees under the age of 35 interested in connecting with our Young Professionals Group, please contact Associate Director Elisabeth Wainwright at ewainwright@bcebaltimore.org
Business Intelligence: August 2022
A little friendly competition – whether it’s a company golf outing, fishing tournament, health challenge, cooking competition or other contest – can enliven the work week and stoke employee morale. What is the best workplace competition that you have ever been involved in?
Sharon D. Elliott
Marketing Manager
Site Resources
Not one event, but many stand out in my mind when it comes to our office coming together for a little fun, competition and team spirit. Over the course of my 18 years with Site Resources, there have been multiple events each year that bring all of us together, bridging office comradery into more personal connections.
Standouts include: Chili Cook-offs, duckpin bowling nights, Minute to Win It (just like the TV show), matchbox car races, scarecrow building, indoor mini golf course building and play, horseshoes and field day, ugly holiday sweater contests, indoor nerf battles, business card building builds, and Pennsyltucky Thanksmas.
Patrick Ferris
Estimator
DEL Electric
We have a quarterly, company newsletter which includes our monthly photo competition where we ask our employees to submit pictures of their job sites and work in progress. We have the administrative staff in the office choose the best photos each month which will be published in the newsletters. The winners receive a $250 gift card for the first-place photo, $150 to second place and $100 to third place. This has expanded into craftsmanship photos as well as site photos. People will send in a photo of an electrical panel or other work that they are proud of or photos of people working on equipment high up in the air. Some of our projects are very unique and have intricate lighting or other installations so the competition lets people show off their work and promotes ongoing field engagement.
“Spring” Golf Outing
May 9, 2022 July 18, 2022 July 25, 2022
Hillendale Country Club
The third time’s a charm! No ifs, ands or putts about it! Our spring Golf Outing was worth the wait (after rescheduling two other times due to Mother Nature’s wrath)! Thank you to our sponsors and players for your patience and making our annual golf outing a success!
1st Place Team:
John Prusak, Steve Lauer,
Jim Quick and Mark Quick
2nd Place Team:
Jeff Schleigh, Blair Beal, Mike Baldwin and Alex Bredenburg
Closest to the pin:
Ned Masek, MK Consulting Engineers (2 feet, 6.5 inches)
Longest Drive:
Blair Beal, The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co.
50/50 Putting Contest
Brian Malanchuk,
Gilbane Building Company
* Poker Golf Team Winner:
J.C. Parrott, Nelson Machado,
Justin Pizza, Robby Isennock
(With a Queen High Straight Flush)
