The seven-story building has a four-story steel- braced frame sitting on a reinforced-concrete shear- wall podium. The building is founded on cast-in-place friction piers, drilled down 30 ft to 60 ft.

Castro Valley has a tight budget. Initially, the perceived cost was $36 million over the $320-million budget, called the target cost in LPD language.

Working together during a validation phase, the team achieved the budget. Some $20 million was removed by buying metals early. But the decision to lock in prices some three years early did not come easily.

“We were having a hard time getting our heads around each other's expectations for escalation with the economy beginning a downturn in August 2007,” says Ralph Eslick, DPR's senior project manager. “We had some very spirited conversations.”

Eight Months For Design

The design team decided it would take only eight months, not 13, to complete the design package for submission to OSHPD. Thus, detailed design was delayed until the program and user interests were more stable, which saved $1.2 million in design labor.

The team also had a strategy to get into the ground sooner. The job was among the first to use OSHPD's phased-review process for incremental permitting. “There was a good, open, honest relationship with OSHPD,” says Kristina Martin, a TEE principal.

LPD-plus involved a preconstruction collaboration with the Herrick Corp., Stockton, Calif., which was not a trade partner. In the big room, the fabricator helped develop better connection detailing and found and resolved conflicts ahead of time. The steel package came in $1.5 million under budget (see p. 40).

Using BIM, the team also coordinated shear wall and slab openings required for risers, piping and ductwork and included opening sizes and locations in the structural drawings. This was completed several months prior to submitting architectural and utility drawings to OSHPD, says DPR, which self-performed concrete work. The team also modeled underground utility lines to minimize conflicts with foundations.

In early 2010, Ghafari suggested laser scanning as a way to validate layout accuracy and verify early on that field crews were following the 3D model. The IFOA team agreed to invest in a pilot effort, starting with the first floor just before the slab was cast. In some cases, dimensional variations checked against the design resulted in adjustments to the utility systems in advance of their installation. This prevented rework, says DPR. The team is also using scanned data to provide easy-to-use representations of the completed facility to Sutter's facility maintenance team.

The need for better communication is one of the job's important lessons. For example, Mobley says that, in the big room, there is a need for the field and tradespeople, not the preconstruction team, to be “looking over the designers' shoulders, saying, 'We really can or can't build it that way.'” McClenahan adds that collaborative behaviors need to be pushed into the field.

For his part, Eslick learned that more BIM is better and that there should have been a drywall model. “Each field conflict is a $10,000 issue,” he says. “Do you know how much you can model for $10,000?”

Sutter's Alta Bates project is incorporating many of Castro Valley's lessons. For about six months, the two teams have been meeting monthly “to exchange stories,” says Hurley, DPR's project executive for both.

Alta Bates has already profited. Contract negotiations went much smoother and faster, and BIM production and coordination is also better, says Hurley.

Christian is pleased with the Castro Valley job. “We're delivering exactly the clinical program requested,” he says. “The owner has not had to compromise, which often happens but isn't talked about.”