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To build one of the modern incubator suites in the new Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) space in the Marine Building, workers demolished a truck door bay, constructed a retaining wall, added infill, installed glass and poured concrete.

And that was just during one day.

“In that instance, in a single day we went from one building security envelope to another,” said Tom Severson, director of field operations for Centrex Construction, which recently finished phase one of the JLR incubator project and is about to begin a second phase of work. “The whole project was very, very compressed. It was quite a process. We got into a pretty cool cadence. It’s fun when everyone’s working toward a common goal.”

Thanks to the hustle of Centrex and its subcontractors, the 73-year-old Marine Building at 1732 N.W. Quimby St. today houses a second, high-tech space in Portland for the British automaker, and a model of how JLR hopes to moves forward with possible future projects. And to do it, Centrex had to meet a four-month deadline, after initially being given six months.

The project is a good example of a highly-collaborative design-build approach that leaves little room for schedule-slip, Severson said during a recent site tour. He used the word “blitzkrieg” describing their process.

“Six months was tight to begin with. It really should have been about seven to seven-and-a-half months,” Severson said.

In June, JLR told the Portland City Council it intended to spend $4 million renovating the 40,000-square foot Marine Building and add 50 to 80 jobs. The space would support the development of technologies that would improve the driving experience and driver safety.

For the project, JLR tapped Centrex, which had worked on the automaker’s first Portland office, also on Northwest Quimby Street. The Tigard-based builder, which often works on aviation projects, snagged the Marine Building project after building the Planet Granite climbing gym, which shares a block with the first JLR office in a building that JLR owns.

“Really, relationships are everything,” said Centrex’s head of business development, Jon Wenrich.

JLR set a date to fly in around 50 company officials to tour the site, which gave Centrex a firm date of delivery.

“We worked with the architect (Fosler Portland Architecture) to find out what Jaguar needed as things took shape in the field,鈥� Serverson said. 鈥淒ecisions were made live-time, working alongside the designers.鈥�

One example of this is the floor. Polishing a cement surface is typically a four-stage process that takes about three weeks. Rather than dedicating the whole project to the polishers, Centrex had shifts of polishers leap-frog each other, some doing heavy grinding as others nearby applied black stain.

“We had to stack those guys to make it happen,” Severson said.

Subcontractors that included Hughes Electrical Contractors, Cochran Inc. and Envirocrete worked off color-coded plans that displayed dates, and times rooms were available for different phases of construction.

At the project’s peak, 65 workers were on site, performing all aspects of construction. Rather than timing a project schedule by the day, subcontractors were scheduled by the hour 鈥� and even in 15-minute increments, in some cases. Crews entered a truck well in the morning, Severson said, and exited an incubator suite when they left for the day.

The Marine Building was constructed in 1943 as a factory for sewing canvas covers for cargo ships. That industrial past is visible in a high cupola in the building’s inner core, where auxiliary columns are visible.

The first phase of the project, on the ground floor of the building, features six incubator suites, an open-plan office for JLR engineers and a sound-proof media suite framed with triple-stud walls. The main lobby has firm red couches and a video screen on the wall that would fit a movie theater.

The second phase will include more office and flex space, and a grand spiral staircase linking the floors. Now that first floor is operational, the second phase of work should have a slightly looser, 16-week timeline, though crews will have to work odder hours to accommodate the JLR engineers now working during the day, Severson said.