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.”
Member News: September 2022
EBL Engineers is celebrating a milestone — 50 years in business.
“This is quite an accomplishment and we are very proud,” said Robert Stratemeyer, Principal. “I have been here for 44 of the 50 years so I am kind of blown away by this anniversary.”
Founded by George Lengyel, Moritz Bukowitz and Benjamin Egerton, EBL started as a seven-person company operating out of a small, basement area of an office building on Chesapeake Avenue in Towson. The company slowly grew. By the time Stratemeyer joined the firm, EBL had 11 employees and he was tasked with managing a branch office in Salisbury.
Two strategic moves in the 1980s placed EBL on a path to assembling a strong client list and achieving robust growth. Company leaders decided to acquire the fire protection firm Hanna Fire Engineering — a substantial source of business. They also decided to refine their business development efforts to focus more on federal government projects.
Today, nearly 70 percent of EBL’s work is for federal clients and its project sites stretch across the country. EBL’s 38-person staff provides mechanical, electrical, fire protection, code consulting, energy conservation, facilities management and construction phase services. Its work has included projects for NASA, the National Park Service, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Naval Academy, Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Kennedy Center, the United States Postal Service and the Dundalk Marine Terminal.
Every project — from commercial buildings, schools and senior living facilities to renovations of federal sites — presents challenges. But for Stratemeyer, the most exciting work at EBL is the complex and often secretive industrial projects. Such contracts have taken EBL staff inside rigorous and confidential manufacturing processes as well as into high-security military sites.
“With some government projects, you get into really interesting R&D work,” he said. “For example, you have to do deep research into how to support weaponry systems. We did one project where they were looking into some weapons systems that required an intense amount of electrical energy. We had to do a study of the entire base because they were afraid if they started up one of these things, the entire town would go dark.”
Additional strategic decisions involved corporate culture and talent management have enabled EBL to thrive for 50 years, Stratemeyer said.
“One of the things I am most proud of is we don’t hire people and lay them off. We hire people we really like and our intention is they are going to retire from here,” he said.
To foster that long-term commitment to EBL, company leaders have worked to create a family atmosphere in the company, host regular social gatherings and, in addition to matching industry pay and benefits, they have increased certain benefits, such as paying the full cost of healthcare insurance for employees and their dependents. The company has steadily refined its management process to ensure that employees are fully engaged in the company’s operations and feel supported by a team. The result, Stratemeyer said, is the average tenure of an EBL employee is just shy of 20 years.
Project Profile: Pikes Peak Summit Visitor Center
Scope of work: Construction of 38,000-square-foot building
BC&E Member company involved: GWWO Architects
For a design firm operating just above sea level in Baltimore City, the Pikes Peak Summit Visitor Center project was bound to be an extraordinary challenge. And then they decided to make it harder.
At 14,115 feet above sea level, Pikes Peak would be the highest altitude construction site in North America.
“Just thinking about building on the summit of that mountain felt crazy,” said Amanda Zellers Moore, Associate at GWWO Architects. Furthermore, “to protect such a unique environment that is accessible to everyone, we decided we had to strive to be as sustainable as possible so we began the process of pursuing Living Building Challenge certification.”
A highly progressive standard, the Living Building Challenge requires projects to satisfy imperatives within seven performance categories, including net zero energy, net zero water, minimal embodied carbon and nearly no use of ‘red list’ toxic chemicals.
The challenge of achieving net zero energy was heightened by the local environment which includes average summer high temperatures of 50 degrees and nighttime lows around zero, winter temperatures as low as minus 40 and windspeeds that can reach 200 mph.
Passive design strategies greatly lowered the building’s energy needs. The design placed the building on the southeast side of the mountain to maximize solar heat gain (and capture a prime view of Mount Rosa) and included a “super insulated envelope” with R60 insulation in the roof assembly and R40 insulation set between two concrete planks that comprised the walls. Designers also sank two sides of the 38,000-square-foot building into the mountain to increase thermal mass and “avoid having tall volume into the prevailing winds from the north and east,” Moore said.
Other design choices — including radiant floors, displacement ventilation and smaller mechanical units such as VAVs — further boosted building efficiency. “A planned solar installation, installed off-site to protect the panels from the gravel picked up by the strong winds, will help offset energy needs,” Moore said.
A vacuum toilet system, which uses considerably less water than low-flow toilets, combined with an onsite water treatment facility cut the center’s annual water use by 350,000 gallons compared to the previous center and eliminated the previous daily need to truck water up the mountain each morning and truck wastewater back down the mountain at night.
Attempting to achieve LBC certification required “a whole-industry effort” from designers, including GWWO’s partner on the project, Colorado-based RTA Architects, engineers and manufacturers through to the site workers who labored in harsh weather and thin air. “But standards like the Living Building Challenge are changing the mentality of the building industry to shift towards more progressive technologies,” Moore said.
Presenting the 2023 Board Nominees…
It’s that time of year again to present the new nominees for Building Congress & Exchange’s leadership.
The proposed 2023 Executive Committee is the following returning members: Michael Martin of Live Green Landscape Associates as President; Ted Bowes of Excell Concrete Construction as Vice President; Rick Scheetz of Gray & Son/Maryland Paving Management as Treasurer; Jeff Hossfeld of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company as Secretary and Thomas Koch of Plano-Coudon Construction as Member at Large.
The nominated board slate is Schyler Bailey of Bowie & Jensen and returning board members John Gregg of GWWO Architects and Greg Meyer of Wohlsen Construction.
Ballots will be sent out electronically later this month and must be returned by Oct. 26. The new board will be introduced at the Annual Meeting on Dec. 7.
Schyler Bailey
Associate Attorney
Bowie & Jensen
A construction law attorney, Schyler Bailey says “I sort of fell into the construction industry and I love it.”
Bailey had initially planned to specialize in family law, but discovered that she preferred helping companies resolve business issues. At Bowie & Jensen, she now handles a range of contract issues for general contractors, subcontractors and a few owners. On top of the standard claims for non-payment, delays and inefficiencies, the pandemic created new legal challenges for construction companies.
Bailey said the firm has worked to refine force majeure clauses to provide added protection to downstream contractors. “These clauses often include epidemic as a carve out but we have started adding pandemic and/or government mandate to help cover a contractor in the event that another stay-at-home pandemic occurs.”
Bailey also helped contractors cope with turbulent supply chain conditions by crafting material escalation clauses for new contracts, negotiating disputes over heightened expenses on contracts that began pre-pandemic and helping clients assess risk levels and cost-benefit scenarios on projects. In addition to litigation in the DMV area, she and her colleagues also pursue mechanic’s liens, bid protests, payment bond claims, construction claims with the Maryland State Board of Contract Appeals and the Armed Service Board of Contract appeals, and arbitration of various issues.
When the pandemic began to ease and networking resumed, Bailey was delighted to find BC&E. “Every event has really great turnout and the people are friendly and easy to talk to.”
When she heard that BC&E was looking to establish a young professionals committee, she happily volunteered to chair it. “I think it’s really important for young professionals to have a network of people in their age group to look to for problem-solving, networking, business and career opportunities,” Bailey said.
The new committee has already attracted more than 40 people and is currently planning to hold multiple networking and educational events over the coming year.
John Gregg
Principal
GWWO Architects
While serving on the BC&E board over the past three years, John Gregg’s appreciation for the benefits of the organization has deepened.
“The biggest benefit of BC&E is the diverse network of people across the construction industry — both individuals and companies — and the ability to not just network with them but build relationships that have depth and meaning,” he said. “It opens up avenues for conversations that are both beneficial from a business development standpoint and beneficial in dealing with the challenges that we have faced over the past few years… The diversity of people I have been able to engage with has expanded my perspective in a more significant way than I expected.”
Gregg, who also chairs the BC&E Programs Committee, is eager to ensure that members have access to a variety of networking and educational events so that they can also build relationships, deepen their expertise and advance their careers in the construction industry.
Passionate about historic and community projects, Gregg advanced his career in recent years with projects such as extensive preservation work on the Jefferson Memorial, the opening of the World War I Memorial in Washington, and GWWO’s projects with Baltimore City Recreation and Parks, including the Cahill Fitness and Wellness Center.
The pandemic also taught Gregg a valuable professional lesson.
“It clarified the way we need to mentor younger staff in architecture,” he said. Previously, “mentoring may have happened on a less purposeful level. The pandemic increased my ability to focus on how we work and communicate with and develop younger staff so that mentoring is more purposeful.”
Greg Meyer
Project Executive
Wohlsen Construction
For Greg Meyer, pursuing a career in construction was a product of “family lineage.” Meyer’s grandfather, father and uncles had worked different jobs within the industry.
“I went to school to become an engineer and knew I didn’t want to sit behind a desk all day doing design, so construction was the right path for me,” he said.
Over the past 18 years, the projects he has enjoyed most are the big, complex, challenging ones that require heightened planning, coordination and communication — like his current project at UMMS Upper Chesapeake Hospital. Wohlsen is completing a three-story addition to the existing, operational Kaufman Cancer Center.
“It’s a pretty sensitive patient population, so we have to make sure our work doesn’t create any environmental hazards for immuno-compromised individuals,” Meyer said. “We also have to focus on patient comfort. If you are sitting in a chair getting chemo or radiation treatment, you don’t want to hear pounding or other construction noise.”
Meanwhile, the project team must also ensure that the new addition integrates perfectly with the existing medical facility.
“Technology that allows us to assemble a building digitally before we put actual pieces together is really beneficial,” Meyer said. A robust design and extensive BIM modeling for the cancer center addition “has allowed us to identify issues that would have resulted in lost time and additional cost long before work in the field began.”
Meyer, who has served on the BC&E board for one year, said the organization plays an important role in helping industry professionals develop the relationships, partnerships and industry knowledge that are vital to advancing careers, growing businesses and completing great projects.
Prolonged supply chain turmoil drives new business practices
Recent shifts in the supply chain are generating a little more stability but very little relief for construction companies who are still wrestling with prolonged lead times, heightened prices and periodic, unwelcome surprises.
The good news is that larger supplies are lowering lead times on some key items. Delivery time for steel joists and girders has dropped from a peak of 14 months down to eight. Lead times for some roofing supplies, which had skyrocketed from three weeks pre-pandemic to as much as 18 months, have settled back down to about four months.
Projects, however, are still being held up by some supplies. Lead times for generators, switch gears, air handlers, and other electrical and mechanical equipment have grown to 12-18 months and delivery time estimates often shift dramatically.
“I had a job last winter that was supposed to have equipment delivered in October. I got a call in October saying the equipment wouldn’t be coming until April. It arrived in June,” said David Hoffman, President of Gipe Associates. “The manufacturers are simply overwhelmed.”
Deliveries of other supplies — including non-critical path items such as wooden doors and laboratory casework — currently are delayed to the point that they now drive construction schedules. Meanwhile, many prices have become less volatile, but the market is not seeing price cuts yet.
“Cost escalation is continuing but it is continuing with fewer products and commodities, and the rate of increase has lessened,” said Bill Hahner, Preconstruction Executive at DPR Construction. The current state of the supply chain “doesn’t mean that things are getting better at the moment. They’re just not getting worse. There are some unprecedented market conditions. I have been doing this for 27 years and I certainly haven’t seen anything like this.”
So how are construction industry companies coping with persistent supply chain turmoil?
“When someone gives us an order, we have to explain to them that we will guarantee the warranty and value they want. But to deliver the roof in four months, we may have to mix and match materials from multiple suppliers,” said Lonnie Downey, Chief Estimator at Ironshore Contracting.
Ironshore’s history of working with multiple manufacturers has enabled it to address supply shortages by determining which membranes, fasteners, insulation materials and other items are compatible with products from different companies, Downey said.
The process dramatically increases the effort that Ironshore project managers must put into procuring materials. It also creates added logistics work and expenses.
“A byproduct of this process is we have to make multiple purchases,” said Gregory Malcolm, IronShore President. “Before, we could have everything come in on load day. Now, we get the insulation one day, the fasteners another and the membrane later. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of deliveries and we have to do multiple mobilizations to store, retrieve and deliver items. But it is still one of the best things we did to cope with the supply chain.”
Unprecedented supply chain challenges prompted Gipe to periodically make big changes in its processes. Realizing that long leads for equipment could seriously impact a public school project in Salisbury, Gipe “worked with the construction manager and major contractors, and pre-purchased everything before the design was complete. We felt we had to take on the increased risk to deliver the project on time,” Hoffman said.
On another project, Gipe changed equipment suppliers mid-project to a manufacturer who charged more but could deliver on a more workable timeframe. It has also added extraordinarily long schedules to many projects, realizing that work would be delayed by equipment lead times.
ARCO Design/Build Industrial started coaching clients on how to alter design and buildout plans to address one particular supply shortage.
“Dock equipment has a really tough lead time right now,” said Drew Enstice, Director of Business Development. “There are many different brands and different types within each brand. Depending on exactly what you need, the lead time and the price can fluctuate greatly.”
So ARCO began suggesting that developers identify tenants’ specific dock equipment needs extremely early or, for speculative buildings, outfit only a quarter of docks with equipment initially to avoid incurring large expenses on equipment future tenants couldn’t use.
DPR redoubled its efforts to understand the specific, current conditions of suppliers, manufacturers and transportation systems in order to identify potential problems early.
“Bad news never gets better with age. The sooner we can learn about issues — like a manufacturer who is having problems or some failure in a supply chain — the sooner we can develop options for the owner and design team and determine what is the most palatable solution,” Hahner said.
Those solutions, he said, could involve sourcing alternate materials, adjusting schedules, approving more overtime, completing items out of sequence, installing a temporary roof (while waiting for a roofing shipment) or completing more work using only temporary power – “whatever keeps the job moving forward and keeps people as productive as possible,” Hahner said.
Mastering all those coping practices, he added, could serve companies well in the long term because “I don’t know if we are ever going to see things come back to where they were pre-Covid, unfortunately,” Hahner added.
Contractors embrace non-traditional means to build talent
Filled with tidy arrays of tools, materials and mock-ups, DEL Electric’s prefabrication shop is primed for efficiency. At its brightly lit worktables and adjacent warehouse, prefab workers can complete tasks typically more than twice as fast as site workers. The operation nearly eliminates waste, speeds installations and reduces congestion at construction sites.
Yet DEL’s prefab shop also delivers an entirely different — and possibly larger — benefit. It has become one of the company’s most potent tools for recruiting and developing talent.
“I know from personal experience how hard it is to start out in the construction trades,” said Doug Townsley, President and CEO of DEL Electric. “When you hire someone who is brand new to construction, a greenie, they don’t know much of anything about the trade. The foremen don’t want or have the time to deal with them, so they get told to push a broom or pick up trash. Guys in the field will pull jokes on them (based on their lack of trade knowledge). It’s almost like college hazing. The first few months working in construction, I almost quit several times due to these same circumstances.”
To avoid that harsh entry into the industry, DEL tailored its prefab operations to also serve as a training ground for its new employees. Over the course of a two-month program, entry-level workers learn the fundamentals of electrical work, develop good work habits and gain hands-on experience with many of the tools, materials and processes that electrical crews handle daily. The experience has turned most trainees into more productive site workers, successful apprentices and permanent employees of DEL.
The industry-wide worker shortage is compelling many construction companies to implement bigger and sometimes unconventional initiatives to attract, retain and develop talent. Innovative training programs that focus on non-traditional hires are proving to be effective.
“If you said the phrase ‘talent management and retention’ 15 years ago, you would get a lot of blank stares from people at construction companies,” said Erik Klebahn, Director of Talent Acquisition at Harkins Builders. “But I think this topic is much more top of mind and we are making tremendous strides.”
Like DEL Electric, Harkins recently embarked on an unconventional training initiative to attract and develop employees. It established the Winter Internship — an on-the-job training program for would-be superintendents. Recruitment for the program targeted individuals without construction experience — often untraditional hires (such as former teachers, law enforcement officers or veterans) or individuals from underserved communities. The program includes several weeks of instruction on a range of topics such as the roles of different trades and how to read construction documents. Participants also receive hands-on experience. They are placed on construction sites and assigned some of the duties and responsibilities of an assistant superintendent.
“The cool thing is Harkins is set up to provide coaching and training. Developing others is part of our DNA,” Klebahn said. “Our site teams are phenomenal at giving people the guidance they need to be successful.”
Following the first Winter Internship program, Harkins offered assistant superintendent positions to about 80 percent of the cohort.
“What we have found is if we focus on the right attributes in candidates — drive, resiliency, adaptability, humility, integrity, teamwork and an eagerness to learn — we can hire based on character and train for competence,” Klebahn said. “They will have to start at the bottom and work their way up, but it gets the right talent in the door rather than waiting for the right resume – one that already has the right degree and years of experience.”
Hiring people with no construction experience “is an avenue we have to look at,” he added. “Other industries have been doing this for years. The finance and tech industries have been taking folks with all sorts of diverse backgrounds that don’t necessarily correlate with what they do in their new jobs. The construction industry has been a little late to the game in this approach to acquiring talent.”
For the last four years, DEL Electric’s prefab program has proven those unconventional hires can become successful construction professionals.
“We look for people who have some sort of proven talent,” Townsley said. “They may have gone through college and earned a non-related degree, but it shows they took the time and effort to pass those exams and earn their degree. Maybe they were in the military which is fantastic because they know understand responsibility and discipline.”
A person who may have not completed college, a high school graduate or even a transitioning worker can also prove they have talent while working in the prefab shop by demonstrating good work ethics and habits as well as an ability and eagerness to learn.
The program provides those unconventional hires with the fundamentals to do electrical work and ongoing support to build their careers.
Prefabrication Manager Larry Dahler delights in delivering expansive education – everything from explaining atoms, electrons, magnetic fields, generators, motors, the trigonometry behind electrical design, and the operations of the electric grid to the months of hands-on training, assembling boxes and brackets, cutting and threading rigid conduit, stripping old wire and insulation, and constructing training boards that include varied connectors, wiring methods, light switches and receptacles.
“When we send them out into the field, they are knowledgeable. They are acclimated to construction, understand the early working hours, and I tell them that when they go out into the field to sell themselves to the foreman,” Dahler said. “Tell them what you know how to do. If you are assigned to something unfamiliar, tell the foreman up front that you are not certain what he wants you to do. Don’t be bashful… They develop a level of confidence that they bring out onto the jobsite. There’s also very little loss of productivity onsite because they can instantly be productive. They also fall in line with the other guys much easier, much quicker which improves morale.”
The prefab program, which also serves as a screening process, has enabled DEL to identify desirable, permanent staff. DEL then offers to pay for their apprenticeship programs. To date, nearly one-quarter of DEL’s staff have gone through the prefab training program.
“Our prefab shop is a great program,” Townsley said. “I could see every type of trade benefiting with having this type of setup in assisting with talent development and job site efficiencies.”
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.”