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Client, architect, and Construction manager must perform a delicate balancing act to shrink the construction process and save time and money.

By Barbara Knecht

Creating team spirit

Within the design process, McConnell credited three things that enabled NBBJ to deliver the design in eight months. First, the use of three-dimensional computer modeling (see Digital Architect, page 133) during the initial design made iterations and revisions quick. Secondly, near the end of schematics, the entire design team stopped what they were working on and devoted two weeks to building an 1¼8-inch scale model. The exercise engendered a cohesiveness in the team by giving each member a thorough understanding of what they were making. Third, a team structure was organized by programmatic building areas through schematics and then reorganized by building systems to complete the construction documents.

Whitehall-Robins Pharmaceutical Research and Design Facility Richmond Architect: Ewing Cole Cherry Brott, Philadelphia (James A. Wilson, project director and lab planner; Don Jones, project manager and designer; Glenna Dugan, project architect) Date of completion: July 1998 Construction manager: Sordoni Skanska USA Photography: © Tom Bernard The Whitehall-Robins project (above) was an upgrade and expansion involving six buildings. The overall project team was organized into four subproject teams, one of which was responsible for the laboratories (left), in order to manage the fast-track project.

It seems clear that those who are great proponents of fast-track construction have excellent records on teamwork. Ewing Cole Cherry Brott has reconsidered its organization. According to Jim Wilson, “We now put all the disciplines together in the same studio so that they sit by project and not by discipline. There is more speed in conflict resolution. We have even given clients and construction managers space in our studio if they want it, and this [convenience] is reciprocated in the field.”

As with NBBJ’s organization of teams of designers to solve specific problems, Ewing Cole Cherry Brott broke down the $75 million Whitehall-Robins Pharmaceutical Research and Development project into smaller subprojects with a separate project team, budget, and schedule for each. Faced with an upgrade and expansion of six occupied buildings totaling 265,000 square feet and a 24-month schedule, the architects divided the site into four separate building projects.

Greater field presence is the norm in fast-track projects; it is still the fastest form of communication, and most architects have a daily presence on fast-track sites to resolve issues and coordinate the work with those team members in the office. In the case of Whitehall-Robins, the on-site decisions were typical field coordination issues, such as conflicts between architectural space and engineering systems or unanticipated design problems. But on-site presence meant that work was never disrupted while waiting for decisions. Field directives and sketches issued and logged into the Web site were immediately and simultaneously available to contractors and the home office.