Walden Center - Naples, FL

Another project showing the best results of the merging of Preconstruction, Estimating and Field execution and how

these pieces working together can produce great results.

This project was a competitive bid design-build project where the preconstruction team had to come up with the

elevation, sample floor plan and a GMP budget.

I was the team lead on the design as well as the conceptual estimator and preconstruction manager. We set about

developing a winning estimate from which we finalized our elevation, and schematic floor plans.

We then used all of the team’s skills to specify each of the components for the project, the number or lights what

styles, the type of cooling systems, sizes and all of the finishes. Everything was specified and detailed in our

presentation calming the client’s worries regarding change-orders or delays. We coupled all of this with a very

aggressive schedule.

Happily we won the award of the project. However this is only half the story the best part came after we signed the

contract.

Our owner always spoke about their desire to build two buildings on this site but felt that they just could not afford to

do this at the time. During the buy-out we inserted into our bid documents the request for the savings if we did two

projects, with the second project being released within 90 days of award. Armed with this information for savings we

surprised the owner and they awarded us a change-order to start immediately on the “second” phase.

Finally due to ground water we lined the pond using bentonite slurry vs. the traditional rubberized liner approach.

This simple change allowed us to line the pond in-the-wet saving both time and money.