"For the plumber to influence the electrician is really a skill that's necessary to get all that can be gotten out of multi-trade projects," says Doug Moore, president of Seattle-based McKinstry Co. LLC, a design-build mechanical/electrical contractor with offices throughout the West. "One bad apple really does ruin the barrel. Multi-trade is everybody or nobody."
Early planning and coordination, with the help of technology, are other keys to the success of a prefab/modular multi-trade project. Contractors need experience with technology—such as building information modeling—because prefab requires meticulous coordination to make sure what's fabricated off site fits properly on site.
Software that helps contractors coordinate their efforts, such as Bluebeam Studio and Revit, are necessary because they allow teams to manage projects digitally anywhere and anytime using various devices, from a desktop computer to a PC tablet and iPad. "You can't do this without BIM," Moore says of prefab.
Jopy Willis, field operations manager at Mortenson Construction Co. in Denver, is using Bluebeam Studio on the $389-million Exempla St. Joseph Hospital (ESJH) prefabrication and modular project he's working on near downtown Denver.
"It allows us to live in both places"—the prefab facility and main site, Willis says. "We don't want to take prefab doors to the openings they'll fit into on site if the openings aren't ready. We can check an opening by going to Bluebeam and making sure everything's signed off."
The 831,000-sq-ft, 360-bed replacement hospital requires 2,692 wood and steel doors. They were being assembled, painted and fitted with hardware in January at a prefab facility about seven miles from the hospital site, where Mortenson is partnering with mechanical contractor U.S. Engineering Co. of Denver. The huge ESJH project is expected to achieve its tight 30-month schedule—groundbreaking occurred in December 2011, and completion is set for this July—but only because key components were prefabricated.
Most prefab projects currently are buildings where the same types of rooms are replicated many times—hospitals, hotels, data centers, office buildings and jails. But as demand for prefab grows, some contractors expect it to be used with all types of buildings.
"You can turn any building into what amounts to a Tinkertoy set, an Erector set. If you can see a future where every job is just a kit of parts, then it's all about the speed of assembling the kits on site," says Moore. "Then you get better at making kits … and buildings could be built in 50% or 60% less time. Those are big numbers."
Despite the sluggishness adoption of prefab/modularization by the construction industry, some contractors remain optimistic. "Today we can pre-manufacture, and we can trust that," says Willis. "This is the future of construction. It's starting to be necessary to meet schedules."
