The Kansas City Business Journal recently named its Capstone Award winners, and 4800 Main was among the recipients. The 2017 Capstone Awards recognize the metro area’s outstanding real estate and development projects completed in 2016, as determined by a panel of independent judges.

Formerly known as the Board of Trade Building, this seven-story, 165,714 square-foot building received a full face lift, including the replacement of the original precast concrete skin with high efficiency curtain wall glazing. This multi-use facility brings additional retail and dining to the south side of the Country Club Plaza and will be home to amazing tenants with deep roots in the Kansas City community.

The skin replacement set the mechanical system upgrade in motion, which includes a new built-in-place 200,000-cfm air handling unit, full sheet metal replacement, and several efficiency upgrades. The team worked tirelessly to upgrade the system in a historical building to reflect the needs of a modern facility.

A Unique Project

The project was unique because we convinced Mariner and JE Dunn early on that the engineer’s design wasn’t​ going to work and the early estimate was wrong. We brought a solution to the table, proved the effectiveness of it, and won the job. We then designed the project in-house without the involvement of an outside engineering company – a true design-build effort – led by Brandon Wikoff, who was preconstruction manager.

David Kessler led the creation of engineering permit drawings with help from Gil Garcia, Aaron Cox, Russell Collene, Tim Scott and Jared Swinney. That group of detailers did a phenomenal job creating a work product that was very different than what they were used to. Their modeling efforts were able to be used for model coordination and traditional engineering permit drawings.

Another innovation was to develop our sheet metal estimate directly from the model/permit drawings, an effort by Nick Baughman, Nate Persell and Chris Trull. In preconstruction, we were then able to graphically present the sheet metal model to JE Dunn as we presented the estimate, making an easily digestible sell to gain buy off on the solution.

Proof of energy savings was a huge challenge for this project. The all-glass architecture fell well short of code minimum energy performance. Several energy savings mechanical system design elements were included and hours of meeting with the Kansas City codes department were necessary to gain approval. Barry Stamp, Tom Poeling and Jeff Shay were critical in developing the energy model and documentation that resulted in energy code compliance and therefore permitting.

On-site, the construction team performed the work while the building remained partially occupied – and without the building exterior, mechanical system and sometimes the plumbing system. Implementation of the project in the field was led by Tom O’Donnell, Executive Project Manager; Ryan Eder, Plumbing Foreman; Eric Attebery, Sheet Metal Foreman; and Brian O’Donnell, Pipefitter Foreman. The group did a great job of executing a difficult project.

Congratulations to the team.

Link to KCBJ article: http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2017/03/24/capstone-awards-2017-office-4800-main.html