Church Renovation Team Building, Part 4
One of the most important things in life to achieve success is to surround yourself with honest hard-working people with a shared vision. This is critical not only in life, but also in construction. Having the right team in place for a complicated project with tight schedule goals the only way to deliver a complicated project on time and on budget. I absolutely think having an architect lead the planning process was critical (obviously I am biased). Our role has been to create base plans for everyone to work off of, establish the scope of problems that needed solutions, evaluate and offer solutions, and be a sounding board for client and contractors. We facilitated meetings, answered many questions, presented findings, offered advice, formed a team, and continue to process questions and information on a daily basis.
Including a mechanical engineer, Suter Engineering, and mechanical contractor, Excel HVAC, was a must to solve this building’s problems. Also, having the future general contractor on the design team also provided him time to be up to speed on the goals and challenges in advance of pricing the project. The pre-planning that was done with Herr & Co. during design also helped a lot also to set limits on construction to stay within budget. Jim and his team were able to walk the building, know the goals and challenges, and bring in the right team of experts to provide solutions. For instance, A-Able plumbing was able to solve a question about source of water infiltration in a basement wall – a pipe in the upstairs kitchen – prior to digging or rerouting on the exterior of the building. This put a plan in place prior to them showing up at the site saving time and money. Weaver’s flooring helped guide the finish selections for flooring keeping us on budget and the right scope in play. We had lots of questions about durability and indoor environmental quality and they walked us through the best solutions. Mast landscapes and Maust Enterprises have been working together to efficiently remove landscaping that was in the way of new equipment or causing water issues. They have also worked together to provide needed drainage of rainwater away from the building. Someone has sent us plenty of rain so we could verify issues that needed to be addressed, thanks God. Valley Roofing came through for us with a solution that gave the water protection I was looking for, but also saved the steeple that we had reluctantly planned to remove. Blosser lighting was able to find a solution to convert our existing (no longer available) sanctuary lights to LED. Copper Key has found and solved issues through the building to make us safer and to provide electric where it was needed for all our new heating and cooling systems. Schlabach drywall found the most cost-effective high sound absorbing ceiling tiles to reduce the impact of changing carpeted spaces over to laminate flooring. I may have missed someone on the list. The point is we have a solid team of honest and hard-working folks making this project as smooth as possible. They are working in dirty conditions in a building with no air conditioning in the summer in Virginia. There have been no major tension and things have gone as smooth as can be expected on a construction site. Picking the right team was critical in this project as it is in all projects.
More on this project soon.
