As shutdowns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic drag on, building industry professionals are adapting to a new way of doing business by leaning on technology to foster communication with co-workers, build client bases and keep projects moving.

People working in the architecture and construction sectors, both of which have traditionally relied on the collaborative nature of face-to-face interaction, are utilizing various tools to continue working as well as discovering that productivity need not suffer as a result of social distancing.

“It’s pretty amazing how quickly we’ve all adapted to this new world,” said Abby Dacey, a principal with Mahlum Architects.

Dacey spoke April 30 during a of the 91��Ƶ’s regular Builder Breakfast panel discussion. Panelists also included Bart Ricketts, CEO of Lease Crutcher Lewis, and Scott Rose, a senior manager with R&C Management Group. Darien Loiselle, a shareholder and construction attorney with Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, served as the discussion’s moderator.

Because Mahlum has offices in Portland and Seattle, its employees are already used to working together while at a distance, and the firm had a lot of necessary infrastructure for doing so already in place. Still, Dacey said, having 95 people working cooperatively from their homes is a far cry from doing so between two offices.

“Architecture is a hugely collaborative endeavor,” she said. “We’ve had to develop a number of workflows to keep us productive and to help us really stay creative.”

Mahlum has erred on the side of overcommunicating with staff. Meetings are held daily to maintain connections between team members, identify any technical issues and plan the day’s work. Because they typically do a lot of broad thinking using whiteboards or sticky notes, employees are using a program called Miro that mimics such brainstorming methods in a virtual setting. Architects are uploading hand drawings and sketches using apps like Genius Scan to share design concepts, and using sketching apps with vector manipulation capabilities or using older programs like Vectorworks to create and share layered drawings.

Lease Crutcher Lewis also has offices in both Portland and Seattle, and was using various digital methods to conduct business before the coronavirus outbreak. According to Ricketts, hashing out the details of a quote in a virtual meeting with subcontractors or trade partners is business as usual.

What’s different, he said, is using the same technology to secure new work, which his team is learning to do successfully without the benefit of in-person meetings.

“We’ve won three jobs via remote interview in the last four weeks,” he said. “That’s pretty cool; that’s something that I never thought we would be doing. We’re getting skilled at it and figuring out ways to be really engaging when you’re on a screen, or sharing a screen or explaining to an owner why you’re the best fit for a job.”

Part of the key to an effective virtual interview, Rose said, is working out the technology ahead of time so it doesn’t become an obstacle. Doing a dry run with somebody on another end is a good way to avoid potential snags.

“Make sure it’s working really well so that people get to see who you are,” he said.

Figuring out how to make human connections without shaking a hand or relying on typical social cues is key to securing new work and maintaining existing client relationships virtually, Dacey said. One partner at Mahlum held a virtual lounge with higher education clients; another colleague, who typically holds a monthly breakfast meeting with district representatives, recently sent her biscuit recipe to attendees for the virtual version of the meeting.

“We’re using technology in as many creative ways as we can just to stay connected with folks,” Dacey said.

For Mahlum, most of the innovations are coming out of projects in the beginning stages. A recent pre-proposal site walk-through was conducted virtually by a project manager walking around with a camera. For another project, the firm decided to not do pre-bid walk-throughs and instead make a point cloud scan of the site available to general contractors. Doing so, Dacey said, had the additional benefit of providing views of spaces not typically seen on a regular site walk-through.

All of the Lease Crutcher Lewis preconstruction collaboration is being done remotely. Meetings with clients and architects, sessions with engineers and trade partners – all are being conducted on a variety of virtual platforms. Remote work is changing how the firm administers its projects, and Ricketts anticipates that in the future it could be more acceptable for administrative work, and perhaps even some project engineering support services, to be conducted remotely.

“You may have less of a head count at the job site and have some of those services more centrally located or working remotely, and it’s something that we should probably consider,” he said.

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Multiple school construction projects are under way in Vancouver, Washington, for Evergreen Public Schools. The district last year gained voters’ approval for a $695 million bond, and money is being put to work.

One of the projects under way is a replacement for Image Elementary School. General contractor Emerick Construction is building the school on a parcel of former farmland near the intersection of Northeast 131st Avenue and 52nd Street.

“It’s a really significantly different site,” Evergreen Public Schools spokeswoman Gail Spolar said. “It doesn’t have a school on it, but (crews) have had some interesting things to take care of (on the site) before they started constructing the new school.”

LSW Architects‘ design for the two-story, approximately 62,000-square-foot facility calls for use of mass-timber structural elements, including glulam beams and columns. Laminated veneer lumber will be used extensively in the framing.

An open interior design will allow for tall ceilings, large learning stairs and a media center. The gymnasium and family resource center will be isolated from the rest of the school to allow for public use.

Excavation and site work began in June.

“It’s a little challenging because we have the wetland that’s all part of it,” Emerick Construction project manager Alicia LaManna said. “So, the soil makeup underneath the site is quite interesting in how it’s been filled in over the decades of being a farmland. We had quite a lot of excavation that we had to do before we could even start the foundations.”

In addition to excavation, however, plenty of fill was required to level off the site before construction could take place. Fortunately, there was a ready supply available from excavation taking place for a new elementary school (not yet named) being built on Northeast 162nd Avenue between 39th and 43rd streets.

“The export from 22 – it was quality material,” said Dan Bodell, a project manager with R&C Management Group. “We also ended up taking dirt from underneath the building here and we were able to use it elsewhere on this site, and we went ahead and rearranged all of that. And then we brought this other material in to bring the whole site up.”

As a result, much of the site has been raised. Also, extensive groundwater required construction of a massive stormwater retention chamber on the east side of the site. Multiple temporary wells were used to pump out groundwater during excavation for the slab-on-grade foundation.

“Everything has been brought up four or five feet so that we weren’t down in the wet,” Bodell said. “And that goes back to all the engineering that goes into handling the rainwater – making sure we’re not flooding (adjacent residences) when the rains come because all of a sudden you have a hard surface here.”

After the new Image Elementary School opens (fall 2020 is the target date), the existing one – near the intersection of Northeast 122nd Avenue and 44th Street – will serve as a temporary facility on a rotating basis for other schools being replaced by new ones on their current properties.

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Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, is putting to work $695 million of bond money approved by voters in February 2018. Dozens of school buildings are being renovated or replaced; one of the first is Sifton Elementary School, in Northeast Vancouver.

General contractor Pence Construction is tackling the $38 million project to replace an existing school built in 1958. The new, two-story, 62,000-square-foot Sifton Elementary will be the first of multiple new schools produced from a prototype design by LSW Architects.

Construction crews broke ground in April. These days, large glulam structural members are being erected for the gymnasium and auditorium, and exterior and interior walls are being framed. Soon, other tradespeople will arrive on site to begin rough-in work, but right now framers are working to get the building roofed and dried in before weather becomes harsher.

Wood framing is being used for the new school.

“It was a judgment call that we made early on in the design process,” R&C Management Group senior project manager Dan Bodell said. “Two years ago, construction costs were going nuts. Now, it’s not the same month-to-month creep that was going on; it’s a little more like a three-percent-a-year kind of cost creep. But we had to think: What can we do in the bones of the building to save money? And that’s why we went to wood framing.”

Crews with Salem-based DSL Builders are framing interior walls away from the main building and using a crane to fly them into place.

“Everybody will do some level of pre-fabbing,” Bodell said. “But here it’s all being done on site. At PS 22 they’re framing them in place and standing them up – not building them 100 feet away and swinging them into place. It’s just about different styles.”

“PS 22” is a new school, not yet named, being built by general contractor Triplett Wellman Contractors on Northeast 162nd Avenue. Meanwhile, a replacement for the existing Image Elementary School is being built by Emerick Construction on Northeast 131st Avenue. All three project teams are expected to finish their work by summer 2020, in time for the facilities to open for the 2020-21 school year.

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The path to construction of a new Sifton Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington, actually started with a massive fire.

That 2013 blaze may have destroyed Crestline Elementary School, but the process to replace the building led Evergreen Public Schools officials to select a prototype by LSW Architects. The new school opened barely 18 months later and featured a design that could be used in the future.

Fast-forward to 2018, when voters approved a $695 million capital bond measure – a sizable amount of it for six new elementary schools. Naturally, officials referred to the Crestline project when beginning the new ones, including Sifton.

“It was great because we already had the prototypical design,” said Gail Spolar, communications director for the school district.

Pence Construction is serving as the construction manager and general contractor for the Sifton project, which was designed by LSW Architects. Also, R&C Management Group is handling project management duties.

The original Sifton Elementary School, at 7301 N.E. 137th Ave., was built in 1958 as a single-story structure largely with a slab-on-grade foundation and concrete masonry unit (CMU) walls. The replacement structure, with a different footprint on the same property, will feature wood framing over a slab-on-grade foundation. Exposed glulam beams will be used for both practical and aesthetic reasons.

“There are not a lot of exotics in the design itself,” R&C Management Group project manager Dan Bodell said. “There are some design concepts that are more about the teaching methods, but as far as the structure itself we have a one-story gym with administrative on the front and then a two-story classroom wing and the nice views of (Mount Hood).”

Although the Crestline design was the basis for the new Sifton facility, improvements have been made, according to Sue Steinbrenner, Evergreen Public Schools’ director of facilities.

“Our other prototype really had the media (center) self-contained within its own room,” she said. “So we put the libraries here front and center so you have to walk through it, which is ironically how a lot of our buildings from the 1970s are.

“It’s about being sensitive to noise issues and having spaces for the students to break out and choose how to interact,” she added. “The other big difference is splitting the commons from the gym so we can use the gym for after-hours activities and close down the academic wing and make it more about the community partnership.”

The new Sifton school will have a capacity of 550 students. A single-story wing will hold the gymnasium and administrative space, along with the media center and commons. A learning stair in the commons area will serve as the bridge to the two-story classroom wing. Outside, a playground area and a soccer field will be built.

The district’s bond program calls for construction to take place through 2025. Currently, three new elementary schools are being built: replacements for Sifton and Image, and a completely new one not yet named.

One advantage of using the same design prototype on those projects, Bodell said, is that representatives of the three general contractors involved – Pence Construction, Emerick Construction and Triplett Wellman Contractors – are meeting regularly to discuss progress and go over any possible hiccups.

“Sifton is a month ahead of the other two and these guys have the most learning curve,” Bodell said. “But they can pass that information on to others. We’re pretty happy – from the R&C standpoint, there’s been great support from the district.”

All three schools under construction are scheduled for delivery in time for the start of the 2020-21 school year.

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