Parkview Fly Over Video
Following the completion of my sophomore year at Purdue I began my second internship. My internship was with Weigand Construction, which is a general contractor based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I am from the town North of Fort Wayne, so this was a great opportunity for me in that aspect as well. The position I held was an Assistant Project Manager and was placed on two separate job sites during the week. It worked out where I was working on the Adams Central Community Schools K-12 job in Monroe, Indiana, once a week and spending the additional four days at Parkview Regional Medical Center in Fort Wayne.
The Adams Central job was both a renovation and new construction. Over the last several years Adams Central has added on and also renovated other parts of their school, but for this job they want to focus mainly on the High School areas of the building. We updated all the corridors, mechanical/electrical/plumbing systems, added new office space, renovated the library, classrooms and exterior finishes. The largest part of the job was tearing down an existing wing of the school and having a new construction in its place to house classrooms, common space, bathrooms and a concession stand. Some of my responsibilities while I was on site were to update the drawings, maintain RFI's, perform inspections, pick up materials, sit in on meetings and assisted in the estimations of a concession stand and gym renovation.
The Parkview job was a completely different setting. The overall budget for the Parkview job was nearly $600M, and required at it's peak 1000 workers on-site. Weigand was in a Joint Venture (JV) with Pepper Construction on this job. When Parkview placed this job out to bid they wanted a local contractor to team up with a national contractor for the purposes of having the local knowledge and workforce but at the same time having a national contractor that has done a job of this caliber before. The unique part of this job for Weigand employee's, including myself, was that there were people working as part of the construction management team under the JV's responsibilities but also Weigand self performed a lot of the work themselves. In turn Weigand was acting as a sub-contractor and the construction manager. Having the opportunity to see both dynamics of management at one job was extremely interesting and informative for me.
I was working for the Weigand team acting as a sub-contractor for the most part, but would help the JV team if needed. What we were responsible for was all casework, doors & hardware, wall protection, masonry, site concrete and signage concrete bases. I was working directly under a project manager overseeing these areas of work and a superintendent as well. Some of my responsibilities I had for the duration of Summer were to maintain the updated drawings, research and maintain an RFI Log, keeping track and logging materials in place for casework, and updating production reports. I created many of the logs I was using during the summer and they got passed on to others in the field and office to stay on schedule. I also worked directly with manufactures and subs on delivery dates, missing items, and special circumstances. I also was responsible for doing quality control check list prior to punch list dates to ensure that our work was completed in a timely and professional manner. I sat in on several different levels of meetings on site including internal productivity meetings and quarterly meetings. At the end of my internship I was also responsible for doing an estimate of the wood blocking for the roof of an additional medical office building that was being added to the contract.
My experience with Weigand really gave me amazing practice with working with others. I was working directly with people in the trailer and on site daily in efforts to track materials and their placement rates. I also was able to become much better at communicating through e-mail and phone as a manager and leader of those I was contacting. Overall, there are so many intangibles that I have been blessed to take away from the experiences I had over my time at Weigand.
Parkview Med Park 11 Final Project Booklet
Parkview Med Park 11 Final Project Power Point
I have attached two links to my final project for my BCM 212 (Surveying) course from the Fall 2011 semester. A few weeks into the course we were assigned a group final project that would consist of a site visit, a booklet, and a presentation in front of our peers analyzing the layout process used. I worked on the Parkview Regional Medical Center job in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for Weigand Construction during last summer (2011), so it was a natural fit to pick that job for our project because of my pre existing connections. I was able to get in contact with several of my co-workers to obtain the contact information of both the building surveyor, and the surveyor on site for the steel erection and concrete placement. I emailed each contact and also spoke with each on the phone before determining that the on-site surveyor would be our best choice.
As I will discuss in a different post the PRMC project was one of the largest in the Midwest over the last several years, both in size and value. The actual construction layout, and exterior construction for that matter, of the main hospital was done by the time we did our site visit. Fortunately, PRMC was still under construction in the form of an additional medical office building (Med Park 11). This project is a build out office building and was about two weeks from the exterior being completed when we visited. We met with Hagerman's surveyor, Jim Woodruff, and walked the site with him. We learned about his controls, instruments, layout techniques, facts about the building, problems he faced and other facets of the construction layout process.
After we conducted our job site visit, we had to gather what we learned, analyze it and compile it into a booklet and a power point to present to our peers. I encourage you to please take a look at both links to my final project that I have provided at the beginning of this post. This project did not only give me a real world experience of what we were learning and performing in class, but also allowed me to analyze the process of a job activity from a managerial/inspector point of view. I am positive that I will be able to take my experience and apply it to my future in the industry to better analyze processes.
Final Project Sample Documents
Final Project Specification Compilation
During my Fall semester of my junior year at Purdue I took the required estimating course. A partner and myself were assigned to do a semester long compilation of several different disciplines of work for a brand new 50,000SF School of Architecture at Clemson University (Lee Hall). We acted as the general contractor that would be bidding on the job. We were focused on bidding specific areas of the work, doing spec analysis's, creating a simple schedule and created and maintaining an Excel file that would encompass all our materials.
Throughout the semester we would be assigned 2-3 week projects that would build into our final project. The last few weeks of the semester we were assigned a final segment of the job and were asked to compile all of our work and turn it in as an official bid before the deadline. I have attached a file that shows part of what we did for our final project. The attachment only includes our summary sheet, recap sheet, concrete take off, concrete reinforcing take off, and our finishes take off. If you are interested in the complete file I would be more than happy to get you a copy of it, but due to its large file size I have only posted parts of our project. I have also attached our final specification compilation that we were assigned to do.
During this course I was able to strengthen my skills in the areas of plan reading, Microsoft Excel, reading of specifications and my problem solving skills. On top of that I also became very good at using RS Means as a reference for manpower production and pricing in different areas of the country. Another software I was able to use was OnScreen Take-off to assist in our estimates. The last reference tool that we all had access to thanks to Holder Construction was their BIM model of the building they created for the job. Having this as a tool was very beneficial for two reasons for me. One, the industry is heading in the direction of utilizing BIM software on most all jobs and secondly, I am minoring in Computer Graphics Technology (CGT) and use this software daily.
I will be posting at the end of this semester more about the Clemson Lee Hall project because I am currently in the scheduling course here at Purdue and we are using the Clemson job as our project.
Final Presentation
Following my Spring semester of my freshman year I headed to Indianapolis to work for Meyer Najem Construction. I was able to obtain the position of assistant superintendent after first, meeting with one of their project managers/recruiters at the Spring 2010 career fair at Purdue University and an in person interview at their home office in Fishers, Indiana. Once I had the position offered to me they notified me that I would be working under two superintendents on a job site daily. The site I was assigned was a new $22M OrthoIndy 23-Hour Stay Orthopedic Hospital in Greenwood, Indiana. The project was 75,000SF and housed surgical, clinical, and office space including: 4 surgery suites, 42 clinical exam rooms, 15 medical offices and an MRI room to give you a better idea of the overall space. Meyer Najem acted as the construction manager on this job and was hired by the investment firm having the space built, OrthoIndy was just the lessee of the space.
As I mentioned earlier, I worked directly under two superintendents that had already been on-site for about 9-10 months at the time of my arrival. I also worked under the project manager of the job, which happened to be the recruiter who hired me. Between the three of them I was assigned a number of different tasks. I was given a Summer long assignment to keep in mind and compile over my 12-weeks with Meyer Najem. I had to monitor the progress of the lobby/receptionist area of the building documenting work done, issues, solutions, materials, and so on. With this information I made a final presentation to my co-workers and supervisors at their office in Fishers the last week of work (Included as a link).
Other daily tasks included maintaining and updating paper work that included: blue prints, RFI's, change order's, and proposal requests. I also kept a daily log of work progression in my area of interest, gave safety orientation paperwork and videos for new workers, ran errands, and would help the laborer on site if needed. Other activities that occurred were weekly sub-contractor meetings, bi-weekly owner meetings, maintaining and inspecting quality control items that included: casework, fire stopping, flooring (VCT), and acoustical ceiling systems. Each day I would conduct an informal safety walk to ensure that everything was in proper working condition and signage was correct. Then each week when our safety administrator was on site I would do an official safety walk with her and monitor the types of items she was looking for and analyzing possible solutions to current hazards and/or brainstorming to eliminate future issues.
Overall, I was so blessed to have been able to be in the field each and everyday because I was able to learn so much from not only being told, but physically seeing the processes in action. It was a great experience and set my learning curve much higher especially since it was my first construction related job position. The knowledge I obtained over that Summer has benefited me not only in the classroom back at school but my future internship the following summer!
LinkedIn Account
Here we go, this is my first blog I have ever done and I look forward to where it takes me. The main focus of this blog is to concentrate on my job related experiences from school and internships, my work ethic, and my future plans/goals. I will be uploading posts of some projects I have completed over the last few semesters with an explanation and the physical documents. I will also be doing some posts summarizing my prior two work experiences to familiarize you with my background in construction. As I obtain more experience I will continue to add to this blog and try to keep it as up to date as possible. If you have any questions for me what so ever, do not hesitate to message me through this system and I will get back to you promptly. Thanks again, everyone! (Attached is a link to my LinkedIn Account, please visit)
-Jonathan
