Retrofit Renovations

by Marcy Marro | 1 July 2019 12:00 am

JMJS Inc. dba COE Office Furniture Distributor[1] recently completed an expansion and renovation to its corporate offices and distribution center in Smock, Pa. Completed in August 2018, the $8 million project allows the family-owned, third-generation company to better serve its clients and team members with an expanded and more efficient distribution and office space.

The company, which has been operating in Fayette County since the 1940s, is located in Franklin Commercial Park. COE was leasing a 127,000-square-foot warehouse, as well as an additional 60,000 square feet in Uniontown, Pa. The expansion allowed the company to consolidate its Uniontown facility, while bringing operations that were outsourced to a company in Maryland, in-house.

In addition to retaining 43 positions in state, the project allowed the company to create 20 new, full-time jobs. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, when announcing the project, said, “Seeing a family-owned company, which has been in Fayette County since 1940, choose Pennsylvania to invest in their future means that we have the location, infrastructure, and pro-business climate for companies to grow. Additionally, bringing outsourced jobs to Pennsylvania where they belong is a huge win not just for COE, but for the people of Fayette County.”

Fairchance Construction[2], Fairchance, Pa., was the design-builder and general contractor for the project that consisted of a 210,000-square-foot addition and a 92,000-square-foot re-roof. Costabile Construction Inc.[3], Uniontown, Pa., was the site contractor; K2 Engineering[4], Uniontown, was the engineering construction manager; and Circuit Contracting LLC[5], Uniontown, was the electrical contractor.

Project Coordination

Adam Franczyk, project manager with Fairchance Construction, says a lot of coordination and scheduling went into the project as they tried to keep COE up and running during the construction, which took just over a year. “We cut holes in the existing roof, and set columns through the existing roof with a crane to set on piers that we poured in the existing warehouse. This took a lot of coordination with the owners and workers of COE, as it blocked off aisles of product.”

Once the entire new building was completed, Fairchance Construction had to strategically demo the existing half of the building. “This involved the owner moving the product off the racking shelves, and putting it in the new building,” Franczyk says. “Once they had a space cleared out, we would demo roughly 1,500 square feet of the building at a time.”

The new, pre-engineered metal building from Butler Manufacturing[6], Kansas City, Mo., was nestled 100 feet into the existing pre-engineered warehouse structure. The Butler Landmark 2000 metal building system measured 690 feet by 300 feet, which allowed for 75-foot bays and minimal interior columns. For the walls, the project uses Butlerib II metal wall panels. Additionally, Fairchance did a metal-over-metal re-roof using Butler’s MR-24 metal roof system with Sunlight Strip skylights installed for daylighting. The additional space will be mostly warehouse, as well as some small restroom and office areas, and a 14-door loading dock.

When doing a retrofit building project like this, Franczyk says it’s important that the building is not out of square. “That is one thing we check first off before we start putting any panels or clips down,” he explains. “Once you know what you are working with, you can make adjustments at the beginning to make sure everything works out at the end. The worst thing would be if the building is out of square, and when you get to the last few sheets they come up short.”

To address any potential infiltration issues, Franczyk says that once the columns were set through the existing roof, they sealed up the gaps as tight as possible with metal and rubber flashing, and a lot of mastic. “It held up as well as we could of hoped,” he says. “Every once and awhile we had a few drips coming down the columns, but we would address that as it happened. We made it through the project with any damage to any product in the warehouse.”

Weather Challenges

Another project Fairchance Construction is working on is a multiphase metal re-roof project for Armstrong Flooring in Lancaster, Pa. Each phase of the project is roughly 20,000 to 25,000 square feet.

Franczyk says the company is about to start the third phase of the project, where they are only able to work on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. “We are working over the top of the manufacturing line, and work can only be done on off hours,” he says. “Weather plays a huge role in this, since we are removing the existing roof and opening up the building to the elements. We have to be sure we only open up what we can close up in those three days, while watching the weather closely to make sure nothing is blowing in unexpectedly.”

To deal with the limited work schedule and having to keep close attention to the weather at all time, Franczyk says materials had to be staged across the lot, and they could only move the material over that was needed for those three days.

Scheduling and Safety

Unlike new construction projects, working on an occupied job site presents more challenges for everyone involved. And, depending on the size of a project, having more people on-site doesn’t necessarily mean getting work done any faster. Instead, it can lead to everyone getting in each other’s way. To combat this, Franczyk says it’s important to schedule the right subs at the right time to help the project move along quickly and efficiently.

With the COE project, Fairchance Construction worked closely with the owner to keep everything running as normal as possible. And since safety is the number one priority for Fairchance, Franczyk says they conducted Powerpoint presentations to the owners and employees of the company, which showed them what was going to be happening, and what and where to avoid. “Our superintendent on the job Mark Freeman did a great job of keeping everyone safe during the construction by blocking off any potentially dangerous situations,” he adds.

Source URL: https://www.metalconstructionnews.com/articles/retrofit-renovations/

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