"It is a daunting balancing act of time, money, materials, and manpower," says Glen Itzkowitz, operations manager for the Office of Scientific Affairs of the SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine.

The School of Medicine Basic and Clinical Sciences Towers, part of the Health Sciences Center, is a 2.8-million nsf mega structure. The 19-story Clinical Sciences Tower connects to the nine-story Basic Sciences Tower by a sky bridge on the eighth floor, and then again at its network levels on floors one through three. Each tower floor is divided into four quadrants arranged around a central service core. Each quadrant is approximately 5,600 gsf of combined wet labs, lab/office space, and common research areas. Depending upon the availability of funds, Itzkowitz is managing the complete gutting and rebuilding of one to two quadrants a year during the next five years. The renovation of each quadrant is budgeted to cost $1 to $1.3 million and takes 24 weeks to complete, not including design time. So far, two quadrants have been completed in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences.

"For us, the decision to gut-out existing space was simple because of the age and condition of our physical plant, which is approaching 30 years," explains Itzkowitz.

Phasing Construction, Setting Deadlines

Itzkowitz attacks each project armed with two powerful tools: A schedule that phases in the introduction of tradesmen and a list of milestones—tasks to be accomplished—and deadlines by which they are to be completed.

He brings in carpenters first to begin the demolition, followed by plumbers, HVAC mechanics, and electricians. As the new space takes shape, he calls on the ancillary agencies such as fire marshals and inspectors, tele/data technicians, and vendors who install the fixed equipment, casework, and flooring. In between demolition and refit, the old floor undergoes an asbestos abatement.

It is critical to keep the work and materials flowing continuously, says Itzkowitz.

"You don't want to lose skilled trades to other projects," he says. "You want to keep a critical mass moving forward at all times. Once you've lost that, it is beyond difficult to muster resources and develop momentum again."

Moving materials is as important as keeping the tradesmen working. Construction can be moving along perfectly, but it all can come to a halt if, for example, the floor installation is delayed or the gas manifold fit-out is behind schedule.

"The vendors are my golden handcuffs," Itzkowitz says. "I can work no faster than those people. The relationships you have with vendors are critical. It is critical to the success of the project that the commodity vendor feel that his product and its installation is as integral to success of the project as the construction itself."

Itzkowitz tends to forge his relationships with large companies that manufacture products for small niches. As an example, Armstrong manufacturers a flooring system first designed for operating rooms, which he routinely uses in laboratories. Institutional standards that are minimally three deep make a challenging timeline more attainable. For example, Itzkowitz typically buys WaterSaver faucets and eye washes, but he knows that he is just as comfortable installing Speekman or Haws should he not be able to have the former in time for the final plumbing connections. Having those choices lined up in advance allows him to react quickly if the primary vendor cannot fill the order. This flexibility helps him stick to the deadlines and milestones that he's worked out with the tradesmen and tenant occupants while providing the highest standard of design.

"Nothing is worse than approaching a milestone in the project to find out that all of your eye washes are unavailable because they are on national back order," he says.

Those milestones are critical on many levels: They help Itzkowitz minimize the disruption to displaced employees by keeping the project on track, benchmarking his expenses, and providing meaningful progress reports to university administrators.

"If we get to the eighth week of a project, and the costs are where they should be at four weeks but we haven't reached the eight-week milestone, I know I can afford to start authorizing overtime or bringing in more tradesmen to speed things up," Itzkowitz explains.

The current project in the Basic Sciences Tower will be finished and available on time for occupancy. At the time of completion, the project will be ten percent below budget and have authorized only 76 hours of overtime in a total of nearly 9,000 overall manhours.

"We work very diligently with foremen and trade personnel to make the milestones realistic," he says. "It doesn't benefit anyone to set milestones that are totally unattainable."

Cost Considerations

One variable Itzkowitz considers when pricing a job is whether to hire union or prevailing-wage employees. It can be cheaper to hire prevailing-wage workers, who can quickly complete small projects of between 1,000 and 1,500 gsf, says Itzkowitz. However, the talent pool in the trade unions runs deep, and that can help when a manpower shortage crops up in the middle of a job.

"It has been my experience that on very large projects no one marshals resources or progresses the timeline better than the union trades," says Itzkowitz.

A related consideration is whether to hire journeymen or laborers. Journeymen get paid more than laborers, but they work more efficiently. On this project, Itzkowitz is using all journeymen because he doesn't have the time to train the apprentice laborers.

"The key in making the decision is to look at your timeline," he says.

Another way to control costs is to pay attention to the commodities that will be installed in the building. Itzkowitz recommends visiting with vendors, consulting with colleagues, checking references, and going to other site installations.

"Talk to the people in the labs who are working with the equipment," he says. "If you do your homework ahead of time, it's going to pay huge dividends at the end of the project and five years down the road when the device is still working. It lends to sustainable design.

"We've spent a lot of time over several years developing a laundry list of proven systems that are reliable, function well in our space, and are provided by vendors who understand a service-oriented relationship," says Itzkowitz.

It is also important to design a space to be flexible enough to accommodate researchers' needs as they develop without resorting to costly change orders.

"In renovation projects such as these, if you can keep your change order percentages between three and five percent of the total construction budget, I think you are doing a stellar job," he says.

"It is important to set finite goals with soft edges. For instance by installing an equipment room that can easily be converted to a cell culture room in the future you meet both a current need and potentially a future need of the tenants," Itzkowitz continues. "Spending a couple hundred dollars extra now will save thousands later."

Value Engineering

The major systems in the two sciences towers were designed to allow for easy access and maintenance. All plumbing mains and electrical feeds are run through the central core, with the HVAC installed in chases on the towers' exterior walls. This design gives Itzkowitz the ability to run multiple trades at once.

"We literally have four or five different trades working shoulder to shoulder without interrupting one another," he says.

Another example of value engineering is the absence of stand-alone sinks.

"Wherever there is a sink, there is a gang of sinks," he says. "This saves dramatically on piping and plumbing costs."

The same is true of the chemical fume hoods, which are typically paired. Hazardous chemicals are stored in a central area and tank gas comes in through a single service closet for the entire quadrant. The tank gases are distributed through a series of manifolds, regulators, and tubing throughout the laboratory, with check valves every six feet along the way.

Targeted Communication

To make sure the process goes smoothly, Itzkowitz stresses the need for targeted communication, which keeps everyone in the loop while controlling who talks to whom.

The local project team plays a key role in maintaining that communication. The team has three leaders: a project manager (Itzkowitz), who is in charge of communicating with the client and commodity vendors and installers; a field project supervisor or "pit boss," typically a tradesman, who controls the trades and materials; and a design supervisor, who is a consulting professional engineer from the campus facilities group in charge of code and life safety issues, and meeting design criteria.

"We remain in constant communication," Itzkowitz says. "We meet daily at the site with the foreman without exception. We meet weekly and write up a summary of where we stand and where we are closing out the week. We do it by both chronological and fiscal milestones. We benchmark the project and we are able to provide cost-to-date data whenever asked. That data, incidentally, is never more than five business days old.

"This local team becomes the broker of information between the tenant/occupant and the trades," Itzkowitz explains. "I cannot emphasize enough that if you want one of these projects to spiral uncontrollably, start having your future occupants talk to the foreman and suggest changes. Minimize contacts between the future tenants, occupants of adjacent spaces, and the construction trades.

"The problem you can create is hysteria," he explains. "There are things we deal with in the field that look very different than they did in the design. We've had problems in the past where the frequency and nature of communications between trade supers and department personnel has been too cavalier, and by the time a project management team member encounters this information it is approaching rumor status."

One way to avoid that is to give tours to a group of future tenants in the afternoon when the trades are gone.

Proper communication is also critical in managing disruptions to the current occupants of the building. Itzkowitz assigns a single point of contact for large system shut-downs in the departments or in the building.

"They want to know what is being disrupted, when it is going to be disrupted, and when it is going to come back online," he says. "That is literally the extent of the conversation.

"Addressing client needs is paramount," Itzkowitz says. "You've failed if the institution or the occupants don't get what they need out of the project.

By Lisa Wesel

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