Best Of 2006 - McGraw Hill Construction

Best of 2006 Northern California
This four-story, 122,000-sq.-ft.
teaching and student services building
will allow the School of Medicine to
address several long-standing space deficiencies
that are making it increasingly
difficult for the School of Medicine to fulfill
its core education mission.
It provides space for expanded library
and teaching facilities, including classrooms,
lecture halls, clinical skills training
and assessment facilities, computer
labs, and small- and medium-sized multipurpose
conference/teaching rooms.
It also provides office space for the
Dean of the School of Medicine and a
variety of student support services
(admissions, records, financial aid, lockers,
lounge space and a small food service).
The fourth floor is shelled for the
present and will later accommodate other
educational and research programs.
Due to funding and other issues at the
university level, the preconstruction
phase took several months longer than
anticipated yet the end date and the need
for the school to open in fall 2006 could
not be moved out. Although a building of
UC Davis Health System
Education Building, Davis
this detail and complexity should be an
18-month project, Sundt Construction,
the general contractor, is on track for a 15month
completion.
To compress the schedule, Sundt staggered
the bidding. Sundt phased the
structural steel and precast panel bidding
three months prior to the completion of
the design in order to get these two very
long lead items under contract as soon as
possible. This enabled the structural steel
to arrive on time and finish only five
months after construction began.
Through re-sequencing and stacking
some of the trades, with the permission
of the university, Sundt even absorbed
other schedule impacts during that fivemonth
period, including unforeseen leaded
soil conditions and heavier than normal
rains in May of 2005.
Though the project is not seeking
LEED certification, green design elements
include a reflective roof, auto sensor
water controls, energy efficient glazing,
low-emitting interior materials and a
large amount of daylighting.