Project ReAlignment Successes

High School Project

Project Size: $ 35 Million
Participants:

Owner - School District
Design Firm - Architect
Contractor - Large General Contractor
4 Major Subs - Electrical, Mechanical, Masonry and Dry Wall


Total Claim Potential: $ 7.9 Million

Delay to Project: 1 to 2 years

Battle Costs: $ 2.6 Million

Scenario: Owner's Team:

• Lack of coordination
  
• Communication - adversarial
  
• Letter writing campaign
  
• Not able to track construction progress
  
• Project behind schedule
  
• Poor/inexperienced/ineffective management
  
• Mountains of paperwork - redundant/poorly prepared
  
• Non review by contractor of submittals
  
• No schedule for submitting "submittals"
  
• Construction Quality Poor - non-conforming work
  
• Out of sequence work - doesn't know how to coordinate major trades
  
  
Scenario: Contractor Team

• No teamwork between owner and contractor
  
• Relationships are very strained, adversarial
  
• Posturing in communication
  
• GC/Sub motivation is waning - no payment for work performed
  
• Direction is not give timely - delays
  
• Change Order process is in the extreme - requirements, estimation, approvals - impossible to acknowledge changes
  
• Personal attacks on Contractor's Management
  
• Difficult weather
  
• Unforeseen conditions impacting the progress of the work - results in acceleration and trade stacking
  
  
Scenario: Major Subs Team

• Delays due to late notice and late permits
  
• Trade stacking, labor inefficiencies, acceleration, added supervision
  
• Trade coordination suffering - ability to plan long term is difficult
  
• No resolutions of Change Orders - GC/Subs are financing the project
  
• Plans/Drawings not complete - have to figure out on own
  
• Little or no coordination between Design and Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing drawings
  
• 3 week look a head schedule is causing a lot of out of sequence work
  
  
Duration of process:

Started process on 9/17
Finished Change Order Negotiations - 12/15
Payment to the Contractors - 2/5


ReAlignment Process Players:

ReAlignment Facilitator
TAS - Schedule Expert/Helped resolve outstanding issues
IPA - Limited participation - entitlement of issues difficult to resolve


Projected Resolution Costs:

Hard Costs - $ 400 K
Soft Costs - $ 1.3 Million


ReAlignment Process: Under $ 100K

Net result: Design had a phasing process that was impossible to build. The Mechanical / Electrical became the critical path, buildings were built out of the original sequence, and decision making by the owner's team greatly impacted the project.