America’s first census was taken in 1790, under the responsibility of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, by United States marshals on horseback who counted 3.9 million inhabitants. Indeed, the US Census Bureau is the oldest federal agency operating under the mandate of the Constitution. Today, the 12,000 employees of the US Census Bureau are responsible for conducting a census every 10 years, as well as providing a steady stream of demographic and economic data used in government and commerce.
Although the Census Bureau maintains regional offices across the country, nearly half of its employees are housed in the new $300+ million US Census Bureau headquarters office complex at Suitland Federal Center in Maryland, near Washington, DC. Dedicated on October 26, 2006, by the General Services Administration (GSA), the massive complex — which includes 1.4 million s.f. of office buildings and one million square feet of parking garages for more than 3,000 cars — was designed and constructed in just 39 months. In fact, the design-build delivery method used by the GSA under contract with Skanska USA Building Inc. saved an entire year in project delivery time, thereby ensuring the headquarters would be operational in sufficient time to organize and administer the 2010 decennial census.
World-Class Architecture
The award-winning building was designed by one of the country’s most renowned office building designers, Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM). In 2002, SOM was selected to develop the concept design by GSA using its Design Excellence program, which awards significant projects to the country’s premiere architectural firms.
The eight-story main building complex is “veiled” with a unique screen of 18,000 curvilinear white oak wooden blades over patterned exterior glass and green precast concrete panels. This creates a contrasting effect of light and shade, which echoes the branching forms of mature trees in the suburban landscape. The massive office building has two towers — each curved, intersecting radial shapes that measure four and one half football fields in length.
The main building complex is surrounded by smaller “jewel box” buildings, which help scale down the larger structure. These smaller buildings house specialty functions, including a cafeteria, conference center, auditorium, and remote delivery facility. The complex contains state-of-the-art information technology and telecommunications features, which are supplied via a raised under-floor network measuring over one million square feet with under-floor air distribution.
Skanska was commissioned in August 2003 to design and construct the project in two phases: Phase I, approximately 770,000 s.f. of office space and structured parking for 1,600 vehicles, and Phase II, approximately 630,000 s.f. of office space and a 1,500-vehicle parking structure. Dallas-based HKS was Skanska’s design-build partner and architect-of-record on the project. With a history of partnering well together, the firms had collaborated on 25 previous projects.
Design-Build: The Only Viable Option
Once the Census Bureau received Congressional funding to build a new headquarters, the agency had to decide on a project delivery method. Its mission-critical preparation for the 2010 decennial census required strict adherence to a December 2006 completion date. The Bureau, and its development partner, GSA, looked at its available construction options and decided that only a design-build delivery method could reasonably guarantee that it would be in its new facility in time, while offering the possibility of a year’s savings in the duration of the project.
Design-build provides three distinct advantages to the public sector owner: transfer of project risks to a single contracted entity; a greater degree of certainty for project costs, schedule, and scope of work; and a better value in terms of maximizing the end product that the client, or end-user, receives. For the Bureau and GSA this was ideal. Skanska would deliver design and construction in one contract for a fixed price and with an exact scheduled opening date. This included the scope of work for the massive project, which could be constantly refined, tested, evaluated and changed as needed to accommodate the needs of the client.
The public sector often uses a design-build derivative, the design-build-bridging method, specifically, because of the greater perceived control of the design product, as well as consistency among design-builders’ bid submittals, which are based on a single preliminary design.
The Right Stuff
To say that this star-architect-designed, massive, complex, design-build, public-sector project “posed challenges” is an understatement. In fact, Skanska began tackling one of the key challenges a year before receiving the award — identifying members of a design-build team with the capabilities to win the award and successfully deliver the project. It is highly unusual to form a project team so far in advance. However, because of the requisite skills for this type of project, the firms and individuals who are truly capable of carrying out such an effort are an elite group.
The design-build team comprised some of the country’s most skilled design consultants and subcontractor construction firms. The architect-of-record, HKS, is one of the country’s largest architectural firms. HKS’s project staff and cadre of consulting firms included the best in the country at large-scale office buildings.
Skanska’s project general superintendent Tom Gesuale, a veteran of numerous mega-projects said, “The HKS team was not only an excellent design professional of record, but a true design-build partner in every sense of the word. They were instrumental in our ability to successfully deliver the project.”
Ultimately, HKS’s construction document drawings numbered more than 2,800 sheets in 17 separate volumes. HKS’ principal-in-charge was senior vice president Jeffrey D. Vandersall, AIA, an NCARB-certified, LEED®-Accredited Professional (LEED AP), whose credentials and experience contributed to achieving the project’s goal of Silver LEED certification.
Southland Industries, the design-build mechanical and plumbing subcontractor, is one of the industry leaders in large-scale design-build projects, including the 1.2 million s.f. of under-floor air distribution provided through raised-access flooring. Truland Systems, the design-assist electrical subcontractor, is also an industry leader.
When Skanska was awarded the project in August 2003, the team was ready to go. It is worth noting that the federal government buys construction through a pre-qualified selection process, based on technical merit, past performance and key personnel, which means that the job isn’t necessarily awarded to the lowest bidder. The GSA desires a true construction partner, not a commodity vendor. The GSA calls this a “best-value” selection process.
As the project progressed, the onsite workforce exceeded 800 people, including hundreds of individuals from the local labor force and 130 building trade apprentices, some from local high schools. As a cornerstone of redevelopment in the Washington, DC, suburb of Suitland the project required a very effective small-business contracting plan, which sought out and awarded 24 percent of the total contracting value to disadvantaged, HUB Zone, minority, veteran, and woman-owned contracting firms.
Needless to say, the majority of project participants on the design-builder’s side had not participated in a design-build project at the scale of a $300-million world-class office building for the federal government. Therefore, the core team, which did have that level of experience, was crucial in sharing their knowledge and educating the project team as a whole.
Skanska executive vice president and project executive Michael F. Leondi noted that “the award-winning architectural design was a challenge with its unusual geometry and creative use of building materials. Fortunately, we had a focused and talented team of individuals and key subcontractors that rose to the occasion and delivered a stunning success.”
The Hyphen in “Design-Build”
Although design-build projects generally are led by contractors, most contractors do not have the internal resources that are required to manage design professionals. Design managers are a rare commodity with a specialized skill set, including fluency in the languages of both architecture and construction, and they are crucial to the success of a design-build project.
Skanska has recognized the need for this infrastructure of talent and has committed to growing it to meet its business objective of increasing its design-build market share to 25 percent of its volume in 2008. At the time of the Census Bureau project, the author was the sole design management professional in the firm. Today, the firm has fledgling department of design managers across the country.
The design-build responsibility involved managing a cadre of several hundred designers at HKS and sub-consultant design firms, the complex interrelationships between these project designers and the design architect, SOM. In turn, Skanska also managed the relationships between the architects and its pre-construction experts and operations staff.
Government Relations
Working with the federal government always entails complex project management — especially, in this case, securing approvals from the client (GSA), the user agency (Census), the design architect (SOM), community groups, and a variety of other government agencies and regulatory bodies. This included the challenges involved in project delivery within the government contracting environment, which is ruled by the well respected Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).
Yet, because design-build is a relatively new delivery method for the federal government, the FAR does not address it per se. Even the contract was not a design-build-specific government contract, but an amalgamation of clauses relating to design and construction. Then, there was the educational process of working with the owner’s team, its agent construction manager, design and construction reviewers and inspectors.
In addition to design management, Skanska had lead responsibility for dealing with all aspects of this process at all levels of government. Fortunately, in this case, there was a single point of entry into the federal government — GSA’s project executive, Jag Bhargava, P.E., PMP, CCM. Moreover, Walter Odom, the Census Bureau’s project executive and tenant representative, worked hand-in-hand with GSA and Skanska to make the project successful.
Steel Prices Don’t Stop the Project
On a project of this magnitude, every day brings a host of challenges. Early on, the global construction market was hit with increases in the demand and price of steel. Despite a 9,000-ton steel order for the structural frame, the project continued without a hitch in the schedule due to solid pre-planning and management.
Probably the biggest construction-related challenge was the fabrication of the 18,000 wooden blades that veil the building. The wood was first specified to be ipe. However, in addition to other issues, very little of this South American exotic hardwood was available in the world market at the time. Ultimately, the project team opted for white oak, a domestically available wood with similar characteristics to ipe. The project team also had to develop a fabrication process to build these blades. The fabricator, Wisconsin-based Sentinel Structures, was exceptionally well-qualified to meet the challenge, having built wooden boat hulls during World War II.
The project was completed on December 15, 2006. Of the 6,000 employees working in the building, more than half had moved in by the October 26, 2006, dedication date, and the balance moved in before New Year’s Day, 2007. Subsequent project phases will extend into 2009, including demolition of existing campus buildings and site preparation for future redevelopment. The project is slated to earn a Silver LEED rating for its environmentally sustainable design and construction features.
The Census Bureau headquarters is an important project for the GSA and Skanska in the Washington, DC, market. Working together through the design-build project delivery process enabled both the owner and design-builder to successfully meet the myriad management and construction challenges of this massive project and successfully finish it with a year to spare.
INFO: Skanska USA Building Inc. (www.skanska.com)