Tupper Lake Fire Station Bid + Arbitration
Preliminary Designs, 3D
Fall 2015
CEE 5960: Construction Planning + Operations
Faculty: Professor Paul G. Carr, PE
Cornell University | College of Engineering
Throughout the period of a semester, the purpose of this course was to introduce and prepare students to the responsibilities of Construction Management and Planning + Operations. Using an existing design-bid-build construction project, Tupper Lake Fire Station, we were able to create a parallel program, and compare our own organization, planning, and estimations against a complex, realistic development.
The outcomes were as follows:
Outcome 1: Evaluate the client’s conceptual design while providing broad and accurate cost appraisals.
Outcome 2: Have a thorough understanding of the interactions and relationships among the stakeholders and participants within the construction process.
Outcome 3: Prepare a comprehensive construction cost estimates for a complex building design, including those for general and specialty contractors. From there, develop an understanding of how the estimate is developed and used in the bidding and cost control processes.
Outcome 4: From this cost estimate, develop a project schedule to determine overall project duration and critical path.
Outcome 5: Confidentially advise project owner of project delivery options in an ethical and effective manner.
Preliminary Spacial Designs
our project
The class was broken down into several groups of seven persons – each group trying to outbid the others’ projects, guessing the exact cost of construction, and later enacting and seeking to win the mock construction arbitration. The graduate level course was composed of fifty+ graduate and undergraduate students varying in backgrounds from civil engineering, to realestate, to architecture. Our faux company, OAK Design Inc., was composed of all all undergraduates and a majority of exchange students from Santander, Spain. Working with language constraints in both Spanish and English, we were still able to outbid a majority of graduate students, and place second in the competition to guess most accurately the exact cost of construction.
As the Senior Project Manager, I coordinated team members and schedules to create a holistic and well-crafted design, rendered AutoCad drawings, as well as ensured and reviewed all requirements were meet for the project.
The origional blueprints of the Tupper Lake Fire Station Facility.
our design
Our vision for the Tupper Lake Emergency Service Building has a style that blends into the style of many buildings in Tupper Lake Village. This includes wood panel siding, local decorative flora, a recreational patio, and inclined roofs tiled with shingles.
There is sufficient parking outside for a station of this magnitude. The fire and ambulance bays have direct access to the main road to avoid clogging during emergencies, and the police station has direct access to the sally port to transfer arrested persons to the booking room.
The plan is divided into three zones: community space, fire station space, and police station space. It is not very common to have a combined police and fire station, and in many cases it is not natural for the two to mix socially. In many cases, architects have tried to force the integrations of different groups of people through the design, but it tends to be counterproductive. For this reason, we have divided the plan so that the fire people and the police people can have their own spaces by closing doors, but can easily interact if there is desire. All zones are also designed for accessibility of the disabled and handicapped.
The architects and engineers at Oak Design consider passive sustainable design to be most important. It is an inexpensive way for the owner to save money, while conserving energy use. The key passive design features that can be found in this proposed design are the passive thermal control corridor, a white roof, deciduous tree thermal control, and smart lighting.
The passive thermal control corridor is an exterior hallway on the south side of the building that serves as a buffer between the outdoors and the main part of the building. The large windows of the hallway allow ample light to enter and heat up the high thermal mass on the opposite side of the hallway. The thermal mass absorbs heat during the day and releases it throughout the night, keeping the building at a moderate temperature all the time. The white roof has a low albedo, meaning it reflects most of the sunlight that hits it. This keeps the building cool in the summer because it doesn’t absorb much heat. In the winter, the roof will be covered with snow, so the roof has no effect. There will be large deciduous trees planted on the south side of the building. These trees will block sunlight during the summer to keep the heat gain to the building low. In the winter, these trees will lose their leaves and sunlight will pass through, heating the building passively. Lastly, every space has different uses, so a different smart lighting system will be ideal.
Oak Design also included additional features in its preliminary designs that the owner could choose to add or negate due to financial constraints. These features included, but were not limited to: fire station locker and outfitting rooms, weight room, outside patio, parking security gate, basketball court, landscaping, living roof, dormitories, water collection tank system, solar panels, occupancy sensor lighting, water conservation utilities, heat reflective paving, heating pavement, and sustainable furnishings. The company also prepared an extensive document to record all requirements needed to meet LEED Accreditation.
Using a block scheduling method, it allows for a visual break up of construction timeline
scheduling
Phase I. DESIGN
12/01/2015 to 02/06/2016 (68 days)
Phase II. DOCUMENTATION
01/01/2016 to 03/31/2016 (60 days)
Phase III. CONSTRUCTION
04/01/2016 to 12/02/2016 (246 days)
cost estimation
After a hypothetical "winning" bid based off preliminary designs and calculations, the class moved to Phase 2 and used the blueprints of the existing Tupper Lake Firestation to accurately prepare a construction cost estimation.
The cost was broken down into several categories: site works, masonry, metals, wood + plastics, thermal + moisture, doors + windows, finishes, specialties toilet accessories quantities, and cabinet, sign, kitchen equipment and fire detection systems. Each category examined and took into consideration several subcontractor's bids, and then applied the chosen subcontractor's costs for each material recorded in the blueprints to come up with the project final cost.
Value engineering
Our approach to provide the best engineered product was to look to the fire and police station construction market - looking for comparable examples of similar projects and studying their characteristics, scopes, and purposes. With extensive research, we tried to adapt, and include options, of all the advantageous features of other examples in our final design, and use the most recent ENR time, location, and scope indices to best estimate the cost of construction.
An example blueprint used to guide cost estimations, and reveal inaccuracies that led to arbitration
arbitration
In the final phase of the class, each group was assigned the title of either the owner or contractor to enact an accurate arbitration based off inaccuracies and arguable events that acrued throughout the phase of construction. Each arguable offense - delays due to weather, voided Notice to Proceed, unexpected costs, contract negotiations - was backed with addendums, revealed emails, extensive research, inaccuracies in the blueprints, and deep analysis of owner and contractor's agreements within construction documents and contracts. The take away from each case was to avoid arbitrations at all cost due to the complexities and court regulations, unless it is a surety that your party is in the right; otherwise it is best to settle when possible.