From Superintendent in the Field to VDC Engineer

Combining Field Management Experience with VDC

As a former Gilbane superintendent for over four years, I bring a unique perspective to my current role as a Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) engineer. In addition to understanding the nature of how things are communicated in the field, I bring a field mindset and strong relationships that help improve collaboration and productivity on the jobsite. I’m better able to support project teams because I deeply understand the needs of both roles. Field leadership and VDC operations support are really one in the same, when the objective is to build while maximizing quality and minimizing cost and time. It’s easy to see that what we do in VDC has a huge impact on keeping the wheels greased when our virtual efforts go out to the field for installation. I’m able to see what’s going to work and how sequencing is going to happen and better understand the necessary components of construction that aren’t going to be represented in the models but still need to be accounted for. There is no doubt that my experience as a superintendent helps demystify the nuance needed to do our job successfully. I am happy to give this field perspective to the virtual design team.

A Gilbane P3 Project

One of Gilbane’s current projects is for Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) which will deliver five new middle schools and one K-8 school throughout Prince George’s County in Maryland. Working from Gilbane’s Baltimore office, I am working with the VDC team to help support this job. The project will create 8,000 new student seats across the six schools in the county, with a total of 973,000 SF. With an alternative delivery approach, this Public-Private Partnership (P3) program is scheduled to be completed in just over 2.5 years from award to completion. Under a normal process, this project would take at least 12 years. The PGCPS P3 program’s innovative delivery approach is the first of its kind for a U.S. public school system and Gilbane is proud to be a part of this project.

VDC Team Adds Value

Together with my colleagues from Gilbane’s VDC group, our team has been critical in assisting the steel design of the PGCPS project. Coordinating the delivery for steel to six different school sites has given VDC the opportunity to influence and support the project schedule. The VDC team had to interpret the steel vendor’s internal delivery schedules, sort steel members in the model by element metrics (including prime v. unprimed, secondary v. primary steel members, vendor defined areas, traditional mill v. pre-engineered steel, etc.), and constantly communicate updates with the six different field teams.

Due to the design-build nature of this P3 program and the expedited construction schedule, there is ongoing field progress, simultaneous with, and often ahead of, completed design set releases. This has put the PGCPS P3 VDC and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) teams at the forefront of managing ever-changing construction documents, verifying their constructability, distributing to coordinating subcontractors, and executing changes before they are ever officially received from the design team. The VDC team has had to interpret and implement future realities of these schools that the project teams build to, via coordinated drawings from subcontractors, often before these changes are ever printed. With a robust project team including field operations, VDC, and everyone in between, Gilbane is proud to be a strong partner in this significant design-build P3 project.