Southeastern Health Park

The building was initially programmed as four stories with a penthouse, steel framed with 80,000 square feet. During design it was redesigned as a three story building with 60,000 square feet and no penthouse. The open floor plan and windows around the perimeter of the building drove the lateral design to be moment frames. To reduce steel tonnage and save erection time we used the recently developed bolted SidePlate® moment connection which totally eliminates all field welding. This is the first building to use this moment connection from SidePlate. Total tonnage for the building was about 350 tons. The design architect and MEP engineers were Peterson Associates.

This project was initially tracking down the path we feel is the most advantageous for our process – FEG works for the contractor during design to produce a detail model. The contractor,Robins & Morton, was hired as a CM@Risk. We approached them with our new process and were granted approval to provide our Complete Structural Package™ during design for bidding the fabricators at completion of Construction Documents. We shared our structural model several times with the detailer during design and had completed about 85% of the detailing when the project scope was modified to a three story building.

FEG elected not to provide concurrent shop drawings for the redesign project but instead provided a structural BIM takeoff (that also included SidePlate and base plate material) for the fabricators to bid. We discussed our (modified) process with the bidding fabricators and started working with CM Steel when they were given a notice to proceed.

We met with CM Steel within a week to discuss their shop and fabrication preferences – sheet sizes for erection plans and details, connection preferences, equipment specifications, sequencing, etc. The final “for fabrication” package was delivered to CM Steel just six(6) weeks after their notice to proceed – a significant time savings over the traditional process.

And, consistent with our first project, there were no RFIs related to the structural steel during the preparation of the fabrication package. All coordination was handled by FEG.

There was however a significant design discrepancy discovered after the project was awarded. CM Steel has elected to do the stair detailing in-house and discovered the number of treads and risers did not match between the floor plan and stair section. Over two days and several phone calls, FEG coordinated with the architect and simply called the stair detailer with a revised dimension. Imagine how long and the amount of wasted effort that would have been taken with the traditional approach – a key benefit of our process.

From Greg Sain, Project Manager, CM Steel – “This [process] was by far the best experience I have had in a long time. [The elimination of the RFI process] saved a tremendous amount of time.”

Let FEG help your next project benefit from a shorter construction schedule and elimination of RFIs. Call us today.

You can also download a summary of this case study here.