Build It

What happened?

I'm watching a Travel Channel program called "Outer Limits" and they are currently in Seattle showcasing the hydroelectric source of 90% of Seattle's power.  Essentially, in 1903 they built a 10-mile long wooden flume to shunt water from a river down to a hydroelectric plant.  

They built this incredible structure over treacherous mountain terrain, in awful weather and with unsophisticated tools (at least in comparison to what we have today).  However, with all those impediments they were able to construct all 10 miles of wooden flume (with a rail line along the top of it) and the hydroelectric powerhouse in 18 months.

How is that possible?  What happened to construction over the last 100 years that would make that project today take 10 years?  

One of my most viewed posts here is my photo of the new bridge at the Hoover Dam.  The Hoover Dam, one of the world's engineering marvels was completed in only 5 years.  

Construction has gone so terribly wrong, and it remains to be seen if we will ever be able to get back. 

For those of you who wonder the same thing, I suggest reading "Commercial Real Estate Revolution" and "Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets".  Both books are linked from my site and I think have great suggestions as to how to get things back on track.

A Tribute to Japanese Engineering

I think everyone's hearts and prayers go out to Japan this morning after one of the largest earthquakes on record, anywhere.  

One thing that struck me this morning was the low number of reported deaths (so far) particularly in one of the world's most populated cities.  As of 10:00 AM PST this morning, MSNBC is reporting "hundreds" dead which is a very small number considering that the death toll from the recent Haiti earthquake (a full 1.9 magnitude smaller) has been pegged at around 47,000.  The difference is staggering.

So much of this has to be tied to building codes and engineering, and the fact that we're seeing less destruction in Tokyo than one would expect after a massive earthquake like that.  A large reason is that Japanese engineers design buildings with earthquakes in mind and build in the ability for buildings to "sway" and absorb the waves, rather than remain rigid and crack at movement points.  Here's a great video from this morning that illustrates it perfectly:

Imagine the loss of life and property damage if just the three buildings in this video crumbled, much less the hundreds of other skyscrapers in Tokyo.  It really goes to show you what kind of impact the building community can have in preparing for and preventing the worst when a natural disaster occurs.  Something we should keep in mind here in San Francisco.

Good luck and god speed to all those in Japan.

 

Jared Willis

Efficiency in Construction = more construction

I wanted to share a quote from the book I'm currently reading, "Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion Dollar Construction Industry" by Barry LePatner.

In speaking about how increased productivity in Construction would benefit the whole country he writes:

"Higher construction productivity would mean lower construction costs and hence more construction projects.  Improving construction would lead to safer buildings and better infrastructure - bridges, highways, railroads and tunnels.  Similarly, lower housing construction costs would allow an even higher percentage of Americans to purchase their own homes and enjoy a true ownership stake in their country.  Higher productivity rates would also mean more terrorism-resistant structures and the erection of more sustainable quality buildings.  Perhaps most enticingly of all, lower construction costs would spell lower taxes."

Construction is a pretty risk averse industry.  Few want to do things in a new way, few want to change.  I believe that many think increased efficiencies means reduction of jobs (which there may be some of), but I think LePatner is right above in that when you increase efficiency, you'll increase the total amount of building in the US.  He makes the point that if construction costs were lower, users would much rather choose to build new structures than stay in their old ones.  

I really recommend this book as well as "Commercial Real Estate Revolution" to get a real insight into what's going on in the Construction industry today and where the opportunities lie.

Happy reading.

 

Jared Willis

Urban Renewal

I took a drive today through the Hunter's Point area of San Francisco.  For those of you unfamiliar with this area, it's essentially a massive abandoned Naval area in the southeast corner of San Francisco.  Heavily industrial, it is slated for a complete rebirth by the development of an entire mini-city on the old Naval base.  More information here: Wikipedia and Project Website.

It was incredible to drive through this area that's so large yet completely uninhabited.  Hundreds of ghost buildings loom all around, the old train tracks still exist for transporting material around the site and the docks are littered with old, barely floating ships.  It is for sure a land that time forgot.  The experience was very similar to the opportunity I got to tour the Mare Island Naval Shipyard which I wrote about a few years ago.

More than my not-so-secret love of old buildings, what really impressed me about this simple drive through Hunters Point is that San Francisco is far from built out.  When I first wanted to get into development, my father-in-law asked me why the hell I wanted to do that here in San Francisco.  As he put it, "Isn't all the land already built on?"  My answer was that even though the land may be spoken for, San Francisco has been in a constant state of renewal for 150 years.  I'm sure people thought it was built out in the 1960's.  There still exist opportunities, especially in area like Hunter's Point, for renewal and remaking.

I think one of the best parts of San Francisco is this ability to have history and modernity co-exist peacefully.  While I am a huge fan of converting and upgrading places like Hunter's Point or Mission Bay I still believe the architectural character of old San Francisco is incredibly important to what the city is.  This is a city that will always be in flux, in all parts of the city.  Not unlike after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco consistently rises from the ashes (or dust) to redefine itself while at the same time keeping that which makes it uniquely San Francisco.  

THAT city is where I want to build.

Jared Willis

Organic versus Processed

A blurb came out today about the revamped plans for the Hunter's Point development currently underway in San Francisco by Lennar Corporation.  The article itself isn't anything special, but I wanted to make a comment on what the project Architect said about their intent behind the project's design:

"That is the nut you have to crack in new development," said Massih.  "You want to introduce enough variety and richness at the snap of a finger, which in older (neighborhoods) develops over decades.  You want to avoid that sameness but at the same time you don't want it so varied that it turns into a hodge-podge."

I was talking about this concept of organic growth with a friend of mine just yesterday.  We were comparing the feel of downtown San Francisco against downtown San Jose, which are two entirely different areas.  I felt that San Jose, especially recently, had been trying almost too hard to create a downtown core to this very sprawled out metropolis.  San Francisco, on the other hand, has developed a pretty solid core around the Financial District/Ferry Building/Union Square area.  But what makes this difference?

Often it's a question of time, that older cities have just had time to develop into integrated communities, but San Jose is one of the oldest cities in the state of California.  Where did they go awry?

This exact same concept can be easily seen all around the Bay Area.  Just go north and east and you will eventually run into the suburbs that were created instead of grown.  Entire communities brought into being at the wave of a developer's hand.  Unfortunately, many of those developers were just creating boxes instead of planting communities.  The ones that were focused on lots created developments that don't stand the test of time.  Developers who take a holistic approach to the process can build communities that are self-sustaining and thrive.

For those that may not care about community creation, I would put it to you that a developer SHOULD care about the type of community he's creating because I feel the purpose behind your development affects the overall success of the project.  As a consumer, I'm less likely to buy a home in the middle of nowhere with no real support network or core than I am to buy in a mixed-use and centered community.  I'm looking for a home, not a house.

Jared Willis

How Eisenhower Invented the Strip Mall

At an event I attended this morning, one of the speakers said a very interesting thing that really got me thinking.  This gentleman was from a local transportation board and was discussing High Speed Rail (HSR) as the next big mode of transportation for the Bay Area and the country.

The great point he made had to do with President Eisenhower and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.  This was legislation that created our current mega-system of highways throughout the country.  That fact alone is uninteresting, but you have to think about the economy of the last 50 years that was created by that single legislative act.

You could argue, from a development standpoint, that this bill was the progenitor of things like suburban tract developments, strip malls, hotel chains, national restaurant chains, mega parking lots and an overall American focus on the automobile.  Because people now had access to freeways, it opened up all of these development and community creation possibilities, giving you access to locations previously cut off from the rest of the world.  We can maybe blame that act for part of our current housing problems in making bedroom communities for larger cities possible and for allowing entire towns to be built around nothing but a strip mall, a school and a freeway exit without a true economic/social core to sustain that town long term.  50+ years of development based on the concept of the "open road".

This also got me thinking: what will the next big mode of transportation inspire?  Since the beginning of time, development has followed transportation.  People built near oceans and rivers because boats were the best way to get around.  The West sprang up around train stops in the middle of nowhere.  Major cities like San Francisco got to be major cities because they were at the crux of shipping routes.  

My favorite example is to look at Los Angeles which was mostly developed after 1956.  Do you think the new mantra of "highways for everyone" had a significant impact on that major metropolis?  I would even go so far as to say Los Angeles is probably the only major city in America without a decent and reliable public transportation system.  The pattern of development in Los Angeles was completely designed with the suburban ideal in mind, only made possible by the myriad of freeways in that city.

Changing Patterns Affect Development

As a developer, you should be thinking very hard about upcoming means of transportation and what that will mean to where you build.  Will High Speed Rail open up entirely new parts of the country for development?  What happens to your current properties if the way we move stops being private car?  What sort of parking do you need to put in when there's no need to drive anymore?

We see this now with a renewed focus on infill, mixed-use and Transit Oriented Developments.  The pendulum is shifting away from the white picket fence and the two car garage back to the closeness of city living.

Even further into the future, what if we ever develop transporters like on Star Trek?  Imagine the possibilities that exist worldwide to create communities anywhere on the planet where you can still commute to where you work in an instant.

Now obviously I'm getting a bit grandiose here, and I don't necessarily think that personal transportation will ever go away, but it is a sure thing that the way we think about and use transportation in the next 50 years will have changed radically from the day that Eisenhower created our national highway system.  

Are you planning for the future?

Jared Willis

Community salvation by community demolition

I was listening to NPR this morning and they were interviewing Dan Kildee of Flint, Michigan.  Dan is the county treasurer and he has a unique plan to save his county from the years of foreclosures, fires  and neglect experienced by the economic downturn: knock all the homes down.

The county of Genesee (which includes Flint) has been buying up parcels of foreclosed homes from the bank, giving them control over wide swaths of land long abandoned by residents and they are beginning to demolish homes and business on those tracts of land, essentially returning the land to open greenspace.  Kildee believes that towns in economic despair like Flint, may need to contract about 40% concentrating the population and services in a smaller area, while beautifying once rough or burned out neighborhoods by turning them back into nature.

You can find a great article on this topic here.  There were two things that really stuck out to me when listening to him this morning:

1. He talked about the American obsession with growth and expansion as central to most American's view of our country, and that proposing intentional demolition went against the ideals that most people he talked about this with, held.  That it's been so ingrained in our brains for so many years (since the Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny) that Americans are meant to expand and colonize, against all odds, that we find it hard to comprehend creating a more cramped and close living space.  

2. He used the term "new city design" to describe this chance to start over from practically scratch and to really take control over a city founded on the principle of personal, not public, transportation.  The majority of America was developed after the proliferation of the personal automobile which empowered/enabled us to create these far-flung cities where suburbs were the promised land.  You can see the vast difference with cities developed pre-1900 (San Francisco, New York, Boston, etc.) versus cities built up post-1900 (anywhere in the San Francisco East Bay, large parts of Los Angeles).

These models of suburban community and transportation have not been sustainable and ultimately have failed.  Think of communities outside of Sacramento or in the Central Valley.  The model is: new tract home, shopping center, new housing community, school, new housing community, shopping center and so on.  These places lack what I feel is the traditional definition of community and can not support each other long term.

Begin at the beginning

This really got me thinking about the progression of Transit Oriented Development and Sustainable Building trends and how cities with situations similar to Flint will have a chance to maybe do it right this time around.  A chance for a city to wipe the slate clean and think longer term about how their residents and businesses will interact and thrive.  The Obama Administration is already speaking with Mr. Kildee about applying this philosophy to 50 cities around the nation.

I don't think there's any doubt that our transportation, cities and economies will be vastly different in the next 20 or 30 years and many of our cities are not physically designed to encourage or support the kind of sustainable, connected communities of the future.

The bad economy can be seen as a fresh start, a reset, for many people.  And maybe in this case, a chance for a city founded on 100 year old ideas to rise from the literal ashes of it's burnt out former homes and communities.  

A chance for us to think smarter, even in our own communities, about great and true "placemaking" for future generations and for future sustainability.

Jared Willis

Building for the future: San Francisco

A story in the San Francisco Business Journal today reported on the finding of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). 

The ABAG says that San Francisco will add 156,000 new workers over the next 25 years and that those workers will require 34 million new square feet of office space.  That's an average of 1,360,000 square feet of office built new each year until 2034.

Moody's did a similar prediction, although their numbers were lower.  They predict adding 61,000 new workers which would require about 13 million new square feet of office.

Regardless of which number you believe, the implication is that building will never die in the Bay Area and especially San Francisco.  It may take a breather (as in what's happening now) but there will always be need and demand for new structures.  Smart developers know that they are not building products for their customers today, but rather for those customers 10 years from now.

I wrote about this topic back in Novemberafter listening to Chris Meany from WMS Partners talk about the need for housing for the future populations of the Bay Area.  Even though it's a tough construction climate right now, he understood that he has to get underway in order to time the market so that his units come online when the housing market has fully rebounded. 

I guess the moral of this post is to have heart.  That this is not the first (or last) recession and that demand and economic feasibility for development will return in time.

Jared Willis

The Spearin Doctrine. What is it and why is it important?

In doing some research on Building Information Modeling (BIM) recently, I came across a legal decision referred to as the Spearin Doctrine.  For those in reprographic sales (or any type of construction for that matter) this is a decision you should become very familiar with.

It was a Supreme Court case (United States v. Spearin) heard in 1918 that essentially lays the legal groundwork for assigning liability for accurate and correct plans.  It pitted a General Contractor against the US Government which had asked Spearin to build a dry-dock in New York.

You can read a great summary here, but basically Spearin completed the work according to the plans as approved by the Owner (the US Government).  A year later, when a neighboring sewer line that was not included on the approved plans broke and flooded the dry-dock, the blame (and cost to fix the problem) was laid squarely on the shoulders of the Owner. To paraphrase the linked article above:

"This doctrine...maintains that a contractor will not be liable to the owner for loss or damage which results solely from insufficiencies or defects in such information, plans and specifications."

When talking to your Owner/Developer clients, the importance of accurate and complete document management can not be stressed enough.  This particular case may deal with the accuracy of the drawings themselves, but stressing your QC processes that help catch incomplete drawings and other mistakes.  Get down to the real issues facing the Owner including that's he's responsible for the drawings that make it out to the team, then show them how you help mitigate that risk with your services. 

Jared Willis

Of construction delays and Pepto Bismol

I've been watching a lot of Construction shows recently.  Stuff like Build It Bigger and Colossal Construction.  These shows offer a great inside look at some of the world's biggest construction projects.  In fact, they even profiled the Grand Canyon Overpass project I blogged about a few weeks back.

One thing that has really stood out to me about these shows is the drama they create around project delays.  At a particularly critical junction, the announcer comes on and says something like, "If they can't get this concrete up on the structure before the thunderstorm hits, the project will be delayed and will cost another million dollars to re-attempt."  First of all, I think, 'A million dollar concrete pour?', but when you add in all the labor, materials, schedule delays and other costs, that number is not exaggerated.  In fact, on the Grand Canyon project, they had a concrete event called the "Million Dollar Pour".

And stuff like that is always happening, all the time and with all the trades (although concrete seems to be involved a lot for some reason).  Every time the announcer tells me how much that one screwup costs, I literally get a knot in my stomach and a little heartburn; and it's not even my money on the line.

We know this happens in real life too.  We were just talking to a GC about a new project of theirs that's slated for a $700 million construction budget, and he said that he fully expects the project to go a year longer than projected and another $100 million over budget.  That blew me away.  This guy, who is very knowledgable in construction costs, expects that they'll spend 1/7th of the job cost in overage.

I started this post to talk about communication, but I think the message that has developed here for Reprographic salespeople is that if you're not helping your clients find a way to prevent wasting an entire 1/7th of their job cost overage and loss, you shouldn't even be talking to them.  If I was that developer, I imagine that the only thing I would want to hear about would be how you're going to help me cut down on overage, risk and schedule delay.  I would imagine that minor savings on materials cost that I could get by hammering subs would be pennies compared to savings in workflow, efficiency and delay.

Bring that message to your clients, help them undo those stomach knots and I bet you'll have their ear and their project.