Law Courts - Ruminations, Blog thought and similar Notes
With barely 6 weeks into our second iteration as a firm, Next was successful in being appointed as prime consultant of the Galleria Replacement at the Edmonton Law Courts in the fall of 2016. What drew the client to our team was the fact we understood the key project challenges and we respected the viewpoint of Alberta Infrastructure mandating that curved and sloped skylights were to be replaced with vertical curtainwall and flat SBS roofs. The Galleria at the Law Courts was an example of a great idea in the 1980’s that failed proper execution resulting in a legion (we heard upwards of 200) of buckets at all times of the year dotting the internal landscape of the Galleria that connected two very important aspects of Alberta’s judicial system.
In the early project meetings, it was made clear to our team by senior Alberta Justice officials that access to justice is not just a basic rule of law it is a fundamental right of every human being. To deny, restrict or fetter ones right in this respect may result in outcomes not in the individual’s interest but also possibly not in the public interest either. Thus, any solution we developed must only allow for work to take place when the courts are not in session – so all work was relegated to evenings, weekends and statutory holidays – clearly this would add a huge amount of general requirements and overtime to the cost of the project.
The solution was simple (build the new Galleria over the old, seal the new and demo the old) but complex in execution, solved by the extensive development of key envelope, structural, mechanical, and electrical models that we call the “Fab4”. While we would have preferred a more collaborative procurement pathway of utilizing a CM @ Risk we settled for traditional Design-Bid-Build and the project remarkably was completed with just 14% over on its budget; 8% for some major unforeseen work with the cladding on the existing buildings for example; 4% design upgrade/scope change and just 2% for design errors. We don’t see it as 2% missing but rather the team of Next and WSP delivered a near perfect 98% coordinated, consistent and complete model with just 16 known coordination issues at turnover for construction. The project took 24 months to complete, no easy task given the powerful message of keeping the doors open and ensuring access to justice.
217 RFI’s in total (Industry Benchmark is 10 RFI’s / $1 Million; or about 27% over – this was simply due to the nature and complexity of the project, most were anticipatory RFI’s given that the design team might not be available at 3am)
7% (17) Preconstruction Design Team RFI’s
37% (82) Course of Construction Design Team RFI’s
56% (118) Pre & Course of Construction Intertrade/Builder Team RFI’s
In all, the greatest compliment we received was from Alberta Infrastructure’s Technical Services who commented that “we don’t always need 11 out of 10 on design; sometimes 9 out of 10 is just fine”. We agree, why pay more than you must for 11 out of 10 and still get a leaky roof? We are happy as well with 9 out of 10 but even happier because we are confident that the roof does not leak!
