San Francisco - HOK Designed Ballpark
Cincinnati - HOK Designed Ballpark
St. Louis - HOK Designed Ballpark
Washington Nationals HOK Ballpark - "Design-Build" ConceptThe City of Fort Wayne picked one of the premier, if not the premier baseball design/construction management firms in this country for the new baseball park at Harrison Square. To look at the ballparks HOK Sports has designed, is to look at some of the greatest ballparks the Untied States has. They have been a leader in the new concept of "design-build" of ballparks
.
The term "design-build" means that the design of the ballpark is ongoing while the construction has already started. This allows for a compressed time schedule from when funds are approved, to the time the first fans walk through the gates. HOK Sports breaks the ballpark down into phases of design and construction. An example would be, to start behind home plate, followed by the stadium's third base side, then onto the first base side, followed by left/center field, and followed by the right/center field. After these phases are complete the final phase would be the baseball field itself. This is not to say how HOK will complete Fort Wayne's ballpark but only an example of "design-build" concept.
HOK can only be as good as their customer allows them to be. Once the plans are being detailed any changes the customer wants could put the entire project completion date in jeopardy. Plus costs could spiral out of control.
The term "design-build" means that the design of the ballpark is ongoing while the construction has already started. This allows for a compressed time schedule from when funds are approved, to the time the first fans walk through the gates. HOK Sports breaks the ballpark down into phases of design and construction. An example would be, to start behind home plate, followed by the stadium's third base side, then onto the first base side, followed by left/center field, and followed by the right/center field. After these phases are complete the final phase would be the baseball field itself. This is not to say how HOK will complete Fort Wayne's ballpark but only an example of "design-build" concept.
HOK can only be as good as their customer allows them to be. Once the plans are being detailed any changes the customer wants could put the entire project completion date in jeopardy. Plus costs could spiral out of control.
HOK emplpoys subcontractors they have used in the past for a good reason. The on-site supervisors and management of the subcontractors know how "design-build" must flow. Delays in completion of any segment, of a phase could put the entire project behind schedule. Any delays in the schedules spells cost financial overruns in labor and materials. If there was ever a project of "leaving the professionals do it," this would be it.
It is clear, a project being built under the "design-build" concept should be left to the professionals who have done this before. However, Fort Wayne leaders should be pushing for as many local construction workers be hired to work on this project, under the management of HOK selected subcontractors.
Posts
5 comments:
Fort Wayne based Weigand construction was picked as the project's construction manager on August 28th.
One has to wonder how many of these kind of projects (design-build) that they have taken part in?
I like that arc thingy in the St. Louie picture, although it reminds me of McDonald's... I might take my mom to a game if Fort Wayne gets one of those!
I have always been a fan of using local contractors on local work, but on a municipal project its not as easy as it sounds.
1. In many cases state law forces Fort Wayne to use the lowest bidder.
2. If Fort Wayne were to force its general contractors to use Fort Wayne labor and subcontractors, other cities would do the same eliminating our local contractors from jobs in other markets.
The real concern is what the city will do with the common wage committee. If the city plans to set a union wage as the prevailing wage then I would expect the project to be 10-15% more than it needs to be.
The simple fact is union wage makes up a part of the total prevailing wage but it is a small percent of the actual market wage. Allen County and Southwest Allen County Schools both have controlled their common wage committee and set a prevailing wage on projects well under union wage saving taxpayers money on capital projects.
Lowest bid? Was Weigand the the lowest bid?
As for labor I stayed away from the union or nonunion (which the labor rate is really about). If it goes either way I would like to see local labor used over having them inported.
It is one thing to manage/supervise this kind of projet but the labor needs only to be skilled in their craft. They do the work and not decide on how it gets done. They give the project the quaility of work and not the schedule.
Post a Comment