Developer�s Challenge to Construction: Innovate for Destiny
 Destiny USA |
 Destiny USA Planned hotel on lakeshore is next phase for former �Oil City.� |
In Syracuse, N.Y., a developer with big ideas and pockets deep enough to pay for them is challenging his contractors to leap for a green, sustainable future. He has crews powering 70 pieces of equipment with the richest blend of biodiesel that temperatures will permit 100%, or B100 from May 1 through most of October. Up to 97% of construction waste will be recycled, and managers are piling on best-in-class information technology in a drive for paperless collaboration, equipment and materials tracking, GPS surveying and machine control, document management and communications. He also nurtures workforce development with generous pay, benefits and long-term commitments to career training.
DestinyUSA founder Robert J. Congel says he wants his project to be a model of how developers can use renewable resources and advanced technology, not only to improve construction efficiency but to fight the nation’s addiction to fossil fuels. He demands that his contractors embrace the goal. “This is a very important project for our country,” says Congel, adding, “This whole fossil-energy situation annoys me.”Congel’s dreams are huge and futuristic. The vision is to create the nation’s largest sustainable shopping, hotel and event destination. But the starting point is a relatively straightforward LEED Gold expansion by 850,000 leasable sq ft of Pyramid Cos.’ 17-year-old Carousel Mall. The next phase, whose initial designs were released on Nov. 8, is a LEED Platinum, 39-story, 1,300-room, $450-million hotel on the shore of Lake Onondaga, N.Y. Financing is in negotiation but construction is expected to start within 18 months to comply with Destiny’s agreement with the local industrial development agency. A Destiny spokesman says the design is a collaboration; the architect of record is Buffalo, N.Y.-based MWT Architects’ Mark Tiedemann. Thornton Tomasetti, New York City, is the structural engineer on the project.
 Destiny USA |
 Tom Sawyer / ENR Destiny tanker keeps fleet fueled with biodiesel |
Construction of the mall expansion began in late March, but it isn’t the driving of 220,000 ft of piles into weak ground and construction on a brownfield once known as Oil City that puts the worksite on the edge of innovation; it is the project’s wholesale commitment to renewable energy, sustainable practices, workforce development and digital collaboration. Congel’s construction team, led by Pittsfield, Maine-based Cianbro, as construction manager, is buying in with enthusiasm.
“This is a collaborative effort between Bob Congel and Cianbro,” says Peter Vigue, Cianbro’s president and CEO. “We are following his lead.”
Congel founded the Pyramid Cos. 43 years ago. It now is the largest private developer of shopping malls in the U.S. As an owner and developer, Congel has a stake in reducing waste in construction. Vigue says Congel is also passionate about improving the environment, as well as the regions’ economy around his hometown of Syracuse. “He is willing to do it at his own expense, on his own project, to demonstrate to the world and the construction and engineering industry that it can be better,” Vigue says.
Early Success
Eight months into construction, Vigue says, early results show the commitment to innovation is delivering successes, as well as progress on a number of evolving technology implementations. Biodiesel has worked out well, as has embracing a paperless process with a commitment to moving everyone toward digital collaboration. “It has speeded up the project dramatically,” Vigue says.
“I don’t think it is a test or a pilot: it is the beginning,” says Brian Watson, phase-one project manager for Cianbro.
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 . GPS controlling stakeout and grading achieve high precision with U.S. and Russian satellites. |
Although challenged by the demands for transformation, equipment managers and operators say they love biodiesel. After starting with a 5% blend and moving up to 20% on excavation machines, they abandoned plans for a gradual escalation and went straight to 100%. They used that all summer with no problems and lots of benefits until chilling temperatures forced them back to blending to maintain viscosity. (Biodiesel gels at warmer temperatures than petroleum- based diesel.)
Melissa Perry, Destiny’s sustainability director, researched the biodiesel program. She modeled it after B100 use at Yellowstone National Park, which consumes 12,000 to 15,000 gallons per year, the same amount as Destiny did each month this summer as excavation contractor, A.P. Reale, Ticonderoga, N.Y., moved 105,000 cu yd of earth for site preparation. She also studies the fuel program of another B100 user, Earthwise Excavators, Snokomish, Wash., which has about a third of Destiny’s annual consumption. The climate conditions at the foot of the Cascades Mountain Range are similar to those of Syracuse.
The bid package calls for exclusive use of B100, although there is a clause for adjustments that allows for the blending in cold weather. Destiny delivers the fuel from a local distributor and subsidizes the $1-per-gallon premium.
Negotiations between the contractors, the leased equipment suppliers and Volvo and Caterpillar protected the equipment warranties on the job, which was a concern with the unconventional fuel, Perry says. “We had to take it to the equipment leasing companies to get their buy-in,” she says. “The subs were concerned the...
...leasing companies might say it voided their warranty. The leasing companies agreed to do it,” Perry says.
There have been no warranty issues, says Scott Tierney, a Cianbro construction and equipment manager. The job ran B100 all summer in every engine on the site, including 1970s-era cranes, pile drivers, excavation equipment and generators.
“I haven’t had one bit of a problem,” says Ken Cloyd, director of pile driving. With a few filter changes in the beginning, biodiesel runs cleaner and removes all of the soot buildup inside the engine.
 Tom Sawyer / ENR Scott Tierney is a Constructware power user with one of the 47-in. displays. |
“I think its great,” adds Hugh Moseley, an 11-year truck-driving veteran in charge of Destiny’s biofuel logistics. “It smells better and won’t give you a headache, and we don’t have to go anywhere and kill for it.”
Excavation contractor A.P. Reale used a Leica GPS system, with a base station for blade control. “They say it saved them a great deal of time,” says Russ Wiederspahn, Destiny’s technology project coordinator. It also keyed in locations for “a ton of underground utilities,” Wiederspahn says. “The electricity is dead, but some of the water and sewer is live.”
Cianbro’s one-person survey crew, John Quinn, uses the same base station and $50,000 worth of Topcon GPS survey equipment to control placement of 140-ft to 350-ft H14 x 117 piles in 1,133 locations. “This is the perfect job to do this. There are so many piles, and it is all open no tall buildings or trees,” Quinn said in November as he marked locations for the piles as the pile-driver banged away, sinking 140 ft lengths in an average of 10 minutes each. “I love it, absolutely love it. This would have taken so long otherwise,” Quinn said.
Equipment manager Scott Tierney says, by the end of November, the job was using a 50% biofuel mix. There is testing of additives, but none were in use. Heating blankets were being procured for some of the equipment engines, especially the cranes, in an attempt to return to B100. “I know the equipment manufacturers can help us overcome the gelling problem with the fuel. It’s just a matter of time before they make that happen,” Vigue says.
Paper’s End
Paper documents are literally disappearing. “We had a house elf go around and collect all the drawings and recycle them,” says Watson. In the fourth-floor project office that surrounds the existing mall’s atrium, drawings are replaced by whiteboards, wall-panel displays and 47-in. desktop monitors presenting models of geometry, schedule and cost.
 Tom Sawyer / ENR Visiting Cianbro managers get a briefing on Destiny technology implementation. |
The large displays are also used to coordinate the Autodesk Revit-based architectural model, with contributions from other modeling software used for structural engineering, HVAC, plumbing, fire suppression and electrical systems. NavisWorks is used for clash detection, and Constructware is used for construction communications and document management. Both NavisWorks and Constructware are relatively recent Autodesk acquisitions.
“This is the electronic version of coordination drawings,” Watson says. “We run clash detection every two weeks and had 4,000 clashes the first time. You fix those, and when you are done, you have a perfect project. It actually is the buildable model, but you’ve got to build it where it shows in the model.”
On the jobsite, paper is being replaced by pen-sensitive tablet PCs in various models sold by Motion Computing. They are running electronic forms and document management systems that now are being tested and customized. The portable computers—20 so far—are issued to Destiny, Cianbro and key sub personnel who are charged with collecting data on the site. They include safety inspectors, supervisors and quality-assurance and quality-control monitors.
 Tom Sawyer / ENR Bridget Reid, Cianbro safety engineer, can log reports with photos in the field on Compaq Model tc4400. |
“The people in the field are extremely receptive,” Vigue says. “It’s working very, very well. We are trying several devices to identify the ideal ones that complement a construction environment.” He describes as a “breakthrough” the discovery of a handheld device designed to work in a medical environment “where they had to constantly disinfect the devices, which means they had to get wet and be scrubbed vigorously.” One area where the technology implementation team is having difficulties is finding devices to blanket the site with a fast, robust, highly reliable wireless network, he notes.
Vigue says the field team so far is pleased with the portable electronic tools it has been given to use, but he is wary of how well they will perform in the winter’s cold. “A lot of these screens don’t operate well in freezing temperatures,” he notes. Consequently, the technology crew is working on creating a heated kiosk for use as a mobile, climate-controlled, self-powered “electronic gang box” in the field.
Vigue says it is very important not to deploy tools that fail. “If we give them a device that doesn’t work, then we lose credibility. Every time we take a step forward, it has got to be the right step, it has to operate, and it has to make their job easier.”
The key here is not to give up, keep searching, keep looking and work with the manufacturers. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but it is important. So we are doing it,” Vigue says. “We are having success with it and improving the process almost daily,” he says. “That is significant progress.
