Project: 3180 Christman Brinker Ford Michigan Central Station

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM:

This was a major renovation, which included the demo and replacement of the two main stair towers for the building (13 stories + sub levels) .  CCC had a good plan for replacing the stair towers, however, after completing the first tower per plan, we identified that we were not efficient had a lot of challenges during the installation due to very restrictive existing conditions. Our job cost/hours were greatly exceeding our budgeted hours per stair tower so we needed to refine our installation plan. 

ROOT CAUSE:

CCC underestimated how much impact the site restrictions would impact our efficiency. We planned for being less efficient but had no way of knowing that the limits of demolition would be so tight for the new stairs to be installed. 

COURSE OF ACTION:

Our team reviewed the factors that impacted us the most and refined our plan;

1. Detailing: the first stair was detailed and shop drawn based on measurements prior to demo, which proved to be less accurate than needed.  For "phase 2", our team requested with the GC (because we "had time") that we wait until after demolition to do a full survey. Not only did we survey, but we also utilized a 3D scan to identify our most restrictive dimensions, and we designed the new stair based on those results. I would recommend this process for any renovation project. 

2. Logistics: we had to work from above and lower stairs into place. We improved this sequence by "pre-loading" the 6th and 12th floors so that we could continuously lower stair sections into place without waiting to bring them into the building as before. 

3. Daily Tracking: the whole team bought into reviewing our progress daily to work towards beating our planned hours for installation. 

We were able to turn the project back towards the positive with an increase of $100K after completing the second stair tower. Much 

LESSON FOR FUTURE PROJECTS:

It can be valuable to spend extra time and money on the front end to give us more information to plan with versus jumping right in and finding out during construction. We ended up gaining efficiency in this instance which greatly out weighed the added costs of scanning and modeling.