McCarthy-Managed Federal Project Earns National Award

St. Louis — McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. has received a top national honor for construction management of the $72-million Oak Ridge National Laboratory Chemical and Material Sciences Building in Oak Ridge, Tenn., completed seven months ahead of schedule and managed by McCarthy’s St. Louis-based federal team.

Already a recipient of multiple honors, including a regional ASHRAE award, Engineering News Record Southeast Best Higher Education and Research Project award, local Associated General Contractors award and the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary’s Improvement Award (for construction management excellence), the project most recently earned the Construction Management Association of America’s Project Achievement Award for new construction project with constructed value less than $100 million.

Per the CMAA, the “Project Achievement Awards program recognizes outstanding achievement in the practice of Program Management/Construction Management.

Award winners serve as examples for CMAA to promote professionalism and excellence in the management of the construction process.”

“This award is further testament to the project team’s dedication to quality, safety and overall project success. The judges recognized the team’s delivery of exceptional construction management services,” said McCarthy Project Director Larry Van Houten.

The Chemical and Materials Sciences Building marked many “firsts” for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, including use of the Construction Management at Risk project delivery method and the application of Building Information Modeling. With CMR, McCarthy provided preconstruction and construction services and was engaged with the owner, architect and consultants from design through construction and until the facility became operational, which lowered the owner’s overall risk on the project.

In addition to the utilization of CMR, McCarthy introduced both ORNL and the Department of Energy to BIM, using the technology as a tool for the first time on a campus construction project. By applying BIM during preconstruction, the project team was able to resolve more than 7,000 utility interferences prior to breaking ground.   There were a number of other advantages gained throughout the construction process.

“Using BIM technology made significant contributions to improving overall project management, as well as building design, construction, safety and future maintenance operations,” said Gary Bloom, University of Tennessee-Battelle project manager.

“McCarthy Building Companies’ team played a key role in the success of this project, setting several precedents for techniques in project management,” said Bloom. “Serving as Construction Manager at Risk, McCarthy completed more than 525,000 safe construction hours of work, noteworthy in itself; but they also completed the project six months ahead of schedule and 34 percent larger than anticipated (160,427 total square feet) due to effective project management.”

Bloom added that the benefits and success of BIM on this project resulted in the adoption of BIM utilization for all future large-scale capital projects at ORNL.

The Chemical and Materials Sciences Building is also on track to achieve LEED-Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, which supports ORNL’s emphasis on energy efficiency in both practice and purpose.

Finalization of concept design, design and construction documents and construction administration was provided by Cannon Design of St. Louis.

Original concept design was completed by Flad Architects of Madison, Wisc.

McCarthy utilized local tradespeople for construction.