From research labs to historic domes, craftsmen excel amid challenges

BC&E News | December 07, 2023

From outfitting a century-old medical research building with modern systems to restoring the grandeur of severely deteriorated historic structures, winners of the 2023 BC&E Craftsmanship Awards channeled their expertise, creativity and dedication to produce outstanding results.

As the teams from Windsor Electric Company and Southern Mechanical Inc. began preparing to execute a three-year, MEP upgrade at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, craftsmen knew the project would include extraordinary challenges. Built in 1923, expanded 11 times and renovated repeatedly, the medical research facility wasn’t designed to readily accommodate a complete, modern array of MEP equipment.

At Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, mechanical and electrical professionals overhauled systems in a 1923 building. Photo courtesy of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

“It was a very difficult building to work in,” said Louis Westermeyer, Vice President of Windsor Electric. “Logistically, trying to get equipment in, trying to run feeders from the basement to the penthouse was complex and time consuming.”

Windsor Electric’s superintendent did a masterful job of plotting the installation of 2.5 miles of new conduit throughout the building, Westermeyer said.

“You would try to plan out feeder routing from A to B but get halfway there and realize there’s a wall that wasn’t on the drawings or a massive amount of old equipment that was never demo-ed out and you would have to find an alternate route,” he said. “For our crew, there was a lot of working through little shafts and coming up in closets. There were a lot of junction points and pull points to get conduit from one spot to another because there was not a clear-shot route anywhere in that building.”

The installation of two new substations in the basement produced another major challenge. The building’s freight elevator couldn’t handle the new transformers and switchgear, so the project team investigated the possibility of bringing the equipment in through an exterior areaway, which was about 10 feet below grade.

Working high above the ground, craftsmen from Worcester Eisenbrandt Inc. completed stunning restorations of the Maryland State House dome. Photo courtesy of Worcester Eisenbrandt.

Collaboration with the equipment manufacturer and rigging subcontractor concluded that it was a feasible access point. However, team members had to selectively disassemble the transformers and demolish walls and ceilings along the basement corridor. The crane operator would also have to lower the equipment into the areaway with just 1.25 inches of clearance.

Meanwhile, the Southern Mechanical team was navigating its own logistical challenges within the building as it installed seven custom air handling units, four return air handlers, 20-plus exhaust fans, two natural gas generators, new building controls, and a complex array of mechanical and plumbing systems. The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company involved Southern Mechanical in the design phase of the project to address design concerns, feasibility questions and project scheduling.

“There was a lot of jockeying around spaces to be able to fit new equipment in,” said Graham Erbe, Project Manager/Estimator at Southern Mechanical. “The coordination of pipe work in the penthouses was really technical. If you were to walk into that space and look up, it would take you a week to figure out what everything is doing.”

In its Craftsmanship Award nomination, Whiting-Turner called Southern Mechanical “an artist of their trade in installing piping among the existing cobweb of piping and equipment.”

The project team’s biggest accomplishment, however, “was keeping the occupants of the building unaware of our massive undertaking,” Erbe said. “It was an intense, highly invasive project and they were not inconvenienced in the slightest.”

M&T Bank Pavilion restorations. Photo courtesy of Worcester Eisenbrandt.

Gatherings of 15 to 20 planners from different contractors and building occupants happened multiple times a week to meticulously plan outages months in advance. That effort to safeguard the work of medical research laboratories would have been needed at any time but was especially critical on this project. As crews advanced the MEP project during the height of the pandemic, scientists in the building researched the Covid-19 virus and possible vaccines.

Other Craftsmanship Award winners applied their expertise and ingenuity to restoring damaged historical structures.

Working up to 145 feet above the ground, the team from Worcester Eisenbrandt, Inc. completed a stunning restoration of the Maryland State House dome. The structure’s windows, louvers and balustrade had experienced serious deterioration due to age and a failed, recent paint job that allowed water to seep into the wooden pieces. Inferior wood used on a previous restoration had also caused some balusters to deteriorate more rapidly.

“The things in the worst shape were the large, oval windows on the second level of the dome,” said Peter Gambardella, a Project Manager with Worcester Eisenbrandt. “They were in such rough shape that when we removed all the paint and the glass, the frames fell apart into a bunch of little pieces. Some were as small as one inch.”

To complete the renovation, Worcester Eisenbrandt craftsmen had to completely dismantle the balustrade and all of the dome’s windows, including eight-foot-wide ovals and 12-foot-tall, double-hung archtops. In the woodshop, craftsmen reglued loose joinery, made dutchman repairs and replicated select pieces from reclaimed, old growth pine.

At the Cannon House office building, Worcester Eisenbrandt craftsmen masterfully restored 166 historic wood windows. Photo courtesy of Worcester Eisenbrandt.

The repairs, however, were further complicated by a decision to use an uncommon, Swedish, linseed paint system on the project. The paint was designed to last 50 years, but the manufacturer had limited data on the paint’s compatibility with common repair materials, such as epoxy.

“Tests we did found the linseed oil didn’t adhere to epoxy as well as we hoped,” Gambardella said.

Consequently, craftsmen had to not only avoid any use of epoxy on the project but also remove all previous epoxy repairs and replace them with wood.

At the M&T Bank Pavilion in Baltimore, Worchester Eisenbrandt craftsmen reversed 150 years of decay through 4,000 hours of expert restoration.

The building’s main architectural features had experienced extensive plaster decay. Some elements had completely disintegrated while others had become so unsightly that they had been hidden behind false walls. And one area needing the most repair was a barrel ceiling 60 feet above the floor. Ultimately, the team was left with very little “workable canvas” from which to recreate the opulent space.

At St. John’s College, craftsmen created a “faithful reimagining” of historic millwork. Photo courtesy of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

Worcester Eisenbrandt erected a dance floor encompassing almost the entire building, installed new substrate to support historic plaster and recreated the missing design elements.

“We had to fabricate casts and running molds, especially for the wainscot beneath the window,” said Raymundo “Sonny” Lechoco, Project Manager. “There were probably 50 feet of wainscot plaster that were thoroughly rotted away and had to be 100 percent demolished. It was also the most ornate thing in the room. We made five or six types of running molds and six or seven silicone casting molds to replicate it.”

At the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., Worcester Eisenbrandt restored more than 250 historic, stain-grade mahogany doors and door frames. Although the restored doors would have to accommodate modern (as well as historic) hardware, the team took great care to match historic details, profiles and finishes, and perfectly restore historic casings, trims, large panel surrounds and transom windows.

At 100 Light Street, craftsmen created a beautiful outdoor plaza that also corrected a flooding problem. Photo courtesy of Plano-Coudon Construction.

At St. John’s College, craftsmen working on the Whiting-Turner project team delivered “a modern, yet faithful reimagining of the timeless millwork” that lined the lobby and Conversation Room and defined the college’s historic character.

Meanwhile, other award-winning craftsmen created modern spaces for their clients.

At 100 Light Street, craftsmen working on the Plano-Coudon Construction project team created a landscape around the high rise building that was both aesthetically pleasing and highly functional. Craftsmen created a floating slab in the plaza and installed wave benches that backed onto raised planters. The arrangement both gave office workers an outdoor retreat and corrected a stormwater management problem onsite.

At the Oregon Grille, craftsmen deftly installed modern lighting and millwork around historic wood ceilings and stone walls. Photo courtesy of Harvey Construction.

At the Oregon Grille, craftsmen working on the Harvey Construction team created a modern, luxurious dining experience inside a century-old building. Lighting specialists completed custom installations to create the right ambiance while protecting a historic, wooden slat ceiling. Woodworkers created a custom bar front, shelving, cabinetry, seating and molding, and exactly matched the edges of the wood pieces to the irregular stone surfaces of the walls.

At Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, craftsmen on a Whiting-Turner project team completed a daunting mechanical upgrade. To replace the existing glycol ice water system with a conventional chilled water system, workers had to remove two centrifugal chillers, ice bays, pumps and 310 linear feet of mechanical piping then install replacement piping, pumps and two 350-ton chillers. Careful planning and prefabrication enabled the team to complete the renovation of an advanced scientific campus without ever triggering an unplanned outage.