Compressing time and space

How contractors squeeze time and space to gain value in San Francisco’s hot real estate market

by Clair D. Urbain

There was a time when constructing a large building could take up a substantial portion of a construction worker’s life. While some projects take five or more years to build, today’s projects are based on finding ways to compress time and capitalize on building space to yield the most usable (or leasable) space in the shortest amount of time.

Field foreman Don Reilly, a second-generation electrician, has been in the business for more than 25 years, and Rob Hupp, a fourth-generation electrician with 12 years of experience, are working for Cupertino Electric Inc. (CEI) on the fast-track, design/build Hotel Vitale project in downtown San Francisco.

“My father was an electrician on the Wells Fargo Bank building built in 1967. That 50-story building took almost four years to build. Now, the same building can be built in two years. That compression in time helps owners get buildings on the market sooner,” he says.

Time is not the only price driver on this job. Real estate in downtown San Francisco fetches top dollar. The hotel is on the corner of Mission Street and the Embarcadero, the busy district that runs along the bay. The site was once a municipal parking garage, but the city, realizing the value of the property, signed a 65-year lease for the land with developers and construction crews broke ground in January 2004. In a little more than one year, what was once a municipal parking lot is now an eight-story upscale hotel with dramatic views of the San Francisco Bay. The plan calls for the hotel to greet its first guests before March 2005.

Design/build pushes the envelope
CEI subcontracts the electrical work on this project; Webcor is the general contractor. “This is a design/build job. It’s a 199-room, 143,000 sq. ft. facility with a 3,000 sq. ft. lobby lounge, a 3,200 sq. ft. restaurant and two conference rooms on the first floor. Another 1,100 sq. ft. of the ground floor is retail space and restrooms for municipal bus drivers,” says Reilly.

To get the most use from the space, the building’s design takes the concept of shoehorning to new levels. “In older multi-floor buildings, you would commonly see 15' floor heights. In this building, the floors are only 9', which means we can get 40 percent more floors in the same building height,” Reilly says.

To save space, the building uses its ceiling spaces as an air plenum. “Each floor’s corridors are fire-rated and are used to help move fresh air through the building. There are toilet exhaust fans in all rooms that pull fresh air from the hallways into the rooms. These units are on emergency power circuits so they will operate even if there is a power failure,” says Reilly.

Room HVAC is part of a closed loop system. “The rooms are smaller and the water-cooling and heating technology is much more energy efficient than standalone electric units used in many hotels,” he says.

Like other design/build projects, engineering drawings are made nearly on the fly. “We have had 400 changes on this project since its inception. We made design decisions even during the concrete pour,” he says.

Rob Hupp, electrician foreman, has experienced the tight quarters and design-on-the-fly approach firsthand. He is responsible for roughing in all conduit from the underground excavation up through the building as concrete was poured.

“This building was constructed with 27 different pour intervals. Each pour was about 12,000 sq. ft. that took place every four days,” says Hupp. Once the pours were complete, rooftop mechanical equipment was placed earlier than usual because the crane and manlift had to be taken down to make more room on the site.

“The challenges started right with the underground work,” recalls Reilly. “There was a building on this site before the earthquake in 1906 and we ran into the wooden piers below ground when driving piles. The piles had to be redesigned, and that pushed the project back 10 weeks. It required us to reroute electrical service and made us work around an underground seawall. In one area, the footings must cantilever support over the seawall because it is in the way,” he says.

Hupp says laying in the underground electrical work was difficult. “We had lots of rain throughout the foundation work. Because the site is so compact, we only excavated 10' at a time to keep working yet stay out of the way of other trades working in the same space,” Hupp says.

The architectural design calls for 13 distinct roof levels, some of which are public spaces that require emergency lighting, monitoring and fire warning systems. “Working with roofers to make sure all stub-ups were installed was like working on 10 jobs at once,” says Hupp.

The elevators use a space-saving design that reduces their mechanical room footprint. “The elevators use a penthouse that is only 10'x14', about half the space of a conventional penthouse,” says Reilly. In this design, elevator power unit controls are located outside of the penthouse. To service the unit, workers ride on top of the car that acts as a lift to the mechanical portion of the elevator. “This is cutting edge – the state of California is still reviewing it. The benefit is lower cost and it preserves square footage for other uses,” Reilly says.

Now that the building is up, space continues to be at a premium. “The delivery area for the building is only 20'x80', so we must work with other subcontractors to schedule deliveries. There is so little storage area on the jobsite that we must have materials delivered only when we need them,” he says.

All mechanical rooms are very tight quarters. The electrical rooms on the roof are only 6' wide and must meet all codes for clearance and safety. “In one room, a support beam comes through in such a way that we couldn’t install the switchgear with the wiring access behind it and still maintain aisle width and clearance requirements. To accommodate it, we added a side can to the switchgear. This gives us narrower switchgear that meets code requirements,” says Hupp.

The phone system, which was originally positioned on the first floor, was moved to the second floor, sharing space with that floor’s electrical room. This change was incorporated after the conduit for the incoming line was laid in concrete. “We worked around it by taking the main lines back through conduit in the floor and then through other conduit to the second floor,” says Hupp.

On the roof, electrical closets are so small that transfer switches and motor starters are located outside the rooms. “Each motor has a disconnect switch on it, but the motor starters are outside to help gain space in the 20'x40' rooms,” Hupp says.

Topping and finishing off
As work crews neared finishing pouring concrete on the top floors, follow-up crews began on the lower levels pulling wire and installing lighting, smoke alarms and receptacles. From data cables to the remote controls for the automatic shades in the luxury suites, finish foreman Robert Taylor and his crew tie each room’s amenities into the grid.

“As the upper floors are roughed in, we are finishing the floors below. We wire in the rooms to the main panel on the floor then lock out all but the temporary circuits. Once the floor is completely wired, we test everything and have the floor inspected. Once it passes inspection, we go to full power on the floor and remove the lockouts on the rooms,” he says.

To speed installation, Taylor relies on apprentice electricians to pre-wire all fixtures with pigtails as long as 10', and then pull them into their locations. Once wires are pulled, the fixtures are mounted and connected to circuits.

With many trades working one area, there have been instances of crews drilling through slabs and hitting other mechanicals in the process. “In this type of a fast-track design/build project, some of that is unavoidable,” says Hupp.

Heading off problems
The design/build process redefines the project specifications on the fly. With it comes the chance for mistakes. To date, Hupp says they have only missed the correct location of one hole for conduit placement. He credits much of that success to Reilly’s attention to detail.

Reilly gets job drawings that are 50 to 75 percent complete and reviews them with the engineer. “I redline them and the engineer goes back and puts them in with CAD and produces the construction documents,” he says.

Published in the January/February 2005 issue of Contractor Tools and Supplies magazine.

back to top