Construction is Easy: Skokie Edition (RL
 

Welcome to Construction is Easy: Skokie Edition, a new 2 story retail building!!

I've been thinking about posting a dynasty on the life of a construction project, as seen by an Architect, for quite some time. My thought is to provide a thread that I can look back on as the project progresses and see a little better where the process could be improved. A 'post mortem' as some like to call it. This forum will also hopefully provide a reason to continue with posts for the life of the project, something that would be unlikely in a vacuum. I can also provide a glimpse into what goes into a typical project and some of the issues faced. As needed I can provide descriptions as to why things may be done or to what extent my firm is responsible as the Architect of Record.

The best opportunity at the moment is a teardown and new 2 story retail building that my firm started work on back in November of 2014. The building will be occupied by a single tenant that will have space on the 1st and 2nd floors. We have completed due diligence and the project seems to have some legs. I didn't want to start posting on a project too early as it is more likely for a project to be killed during the due diligence phase than at any other point. I will start with work that is already completed, which includes asbuilt site review, zoning review, environmental and geotechnical reports and entitlement approval processes. We recently completed a very similar project in a nearby suburb for the same client so this will be an opportunity to compare and contrast with hopes of improving the process. To that end I will try to post the information in a linear process in order to provide a timeline as to events. All information will be somewhat generic as to not provide site specific or client specific information but the processes and not necessarily the accuracy are my main focus.

Please let me know what you may find interesting and want to know more about and I can provide additional information.

First, a little history on my career and firm. I started in the architectural field as an intern in high school working the afternoons of my junior and senior year in high school at a firm in the town I grew up in. I then went to architecture school for 4 years at an accredited school in Milwaukee. I stayed in the Milwaukee area for about 10 years after I finished school and then relocated to Chicago, where I have been for about 10 years. I guess you could say I've been doing this stuff for 25 years or so. My experience has been mainly providing due diligence, construction documents and construction administration services for industrial, retail and office projects. My current firm has been around for about 35 years and is considered to be a small firm by architectural standards. We have 10 people currently (3 owners, 3 project managers and 4 detailers). I am an owner along with the guy who started the firm 35 years ago and a guy who worked his way up to become owner early in the history of the firm.

One of our main clients is a national bank who our firm has worked with for 30+ years. We have provided both corporate (think back office, data centers, cash vaults, security offices, etc) and retail (branch bank, investment office, etc) design for this client. We've been completing retail projects for them for about 10 years. We've worked our way up from being thrown a few bones every once in a while to being their primary architect in this region (the region consists of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia and Kentucky).

When a new project is initiated by our client we usually receive an email with miscellaneous project information and a request to attend a conference call to kick off the project. We received information on this specific project in November of 2014 via an email with an ALTA Survey, a Title Report and a few photos.

Following along!

Very interested to see how this comes along...

I'm a designer in the scaffold industry.

You'll appreciate the myriad of issues we discovered as soon as I post our structural review of the existing structure (80% of the existing bowstring truss building is to remain while we demolish the portion on our parcel).

Sounds like a good shoring project!

You can't even imagine. Here are a few photos of a project we finished up last year. Very similar in scope but about half as complex as what we are up against on this one.

Original building



Demo photos




Nearing completion

Wow. Can't even tell it's the same building. Looks great.

We've been money this winter. Lots of roof collapses = lots of shoring projects.

As someone who drove by the before and after version of the completed project regularly for years (I miss you Einstein Bagels) I will attest that the new building is a huge improvement on the old one. I am looking forward to hearing how this one goes.