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Big Numbers on a Big Job
By K. Robert Wendel
The numbers at the city of Phoenix consolidated rental car
center are staggering: 2.5 million sq. ft. of space; 130,000
cu. yds. of concrete; 10,000 tons of rebar; 660 mi. of post-
tension cable; parking for 40,000 cars.
But the big numbers aren't slowing the design and construction
of what will be Arizona's largest building when the project
is turned over to Sky Harbor International Airport in October.
The project replaces the 1.6 million-sq.-ft. Target Distribution
Center in Avondale as the largest vertical structure in the
state.
A partnership led by the Phoenix offices of Austin Commercial
and Layton Construction started earthwork at the large, 180-acre
site in >> October 2003. Excavation contractor Buesing
Construction of Phoenix moved more than 400,000 cu. yds. of
dirt to create a split-level ground floor on the three-story
building.
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The project is just west of Interstate 10 on Lower Buckeye
Road. The $265 million project sits directly under Sky Harbor
Airport's flight path, so initial tower crane erection schemes
had to be closely coordinated with FAA officials and airport
authorities. Contractors are limited to a maximum tower crane
height of 121 ft.
"It's a logistical chess match," said Austin Commercial
operations manager Joe Lauer. "We ended up with more
cranes than we normally would have needed because of the height
restrictions. The cranes just couldn't reach high enough or
far enough."
Builders usually like to keep the tower cranes running full
time because they cost more than $2,000 to rent per day. But
at the rental car facility, the cranes are often secured and
idle while work proceeds from another tower crane.
Crane heights weren't the only logistical problems facing
contractors and designers. Severe cement shortages are putting
the crimp on this project as well as other large and small
ones across the state. Other materials such as steel and wood
are rapidly increasing in cost.
"I think we were dealt a perfect storm where all the
problems came together," said Ralph Ketchum, southwest
divisional manager with Austin. "If you walk the site,
you see three areas that are ready to pour, but we aren't
pouring because we don't have concrete. We are canceling all
non critical pours, which eventually may bite us."
That perfect storm also claimed a major subcontractor one
quarter of the way through the project. Long-time Midwest
stalwart Havens Steel of Kansas City, Mo., filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy in March. The team worked with the 80-year-old
steel company to keep it on the job by supplying insurance
and bonding coverage for the company's scope of work.
"There are a lot of challenges we don't usually have
to deal with," Lauer said.
"Part of the problem is that we have a lot of zeros on
the end of this contract, so a 10 percent change on $14 million
in work is $1.4 million problem."
Fortunately, the construction- manager- at-risk contract gives
the partnership flexibility in designing and value engineering
the project. Engineers and designers have studied plan sets,
nipping and tucking items to bring the project in line with
the construction budget.
To cut equipment costs and onsite equipment clutter, the team
is acting as an equipment-leasing agent for the various trades
on the project. Instead of 10 subcontractors with 10 wheel
loaders, for example, Austin/Layton has a couple on site for
everybody to use.
Form Follows Function
The site's location was a prime driver of the rental car facility's
design.
Located under the flight paths of one of the nation's busiest
airports, the project couldn't go too high. At the same time,
designers needed to preserve room for 40,000 covered parking
spaces and nine, free standing rental car service centers.
A team of four architects collaborated on the project design.
It included Dick and Fritsche Architects of Phoenix; Burlingame,
Calif.-based Blunk Demattei Associates;, McKinley, Texas-based
HKS; and Denver-based Trans Systems.
"We based the design on trying to get the smallest footprint
on the site and the FAA height restrictions and then worked
our way down and out from there," said David Fritsche,
an architect and principal with Dick and Fritsche Architects.
"The biggest challenge in designing something like this
is that we had to gain consensus between eight different and
very competitive car rental companies."
Eight rental car companies - Avis, Budget, Hertz, Advantage,
Enterprise, Thrifty, Dollar and Alamo, have inked deals for
space at the rental car center. A ninth contract to a "small
operator" has not been let.
Company branding, color schemes and even the colors of the
36 alternative fuel buses that will ferry passengers to and
from the terminal were items of extensive discussion.
"Try getting two people to decide on a color, let alone
70," said Wesley Wong, director of aviation for HKS.
"There's no question that trying to obtain consensus
was the biggest challenge."
Sky Harbor airport eventually plans to construct an automated
people mover between the terminals and the new rental car
center, but the $700 million project is still years away from
construction.
The architectural team also did extensive research into other
cities' consolidated rental car centers in an attempt to bring
the best practices to the Phoenix project.
The individual rental car service centers range in price from
$10 million to nearly $100 million and are separate contracts
from the rental car center. So far, local contractors DL Withers,
Holmes and Son and Adaptive CM won initial construction manager-
at-risk contracts.
Each rental car company has space in the 186,000-sq.-ft. consolidated
rental car facility's customer service center and in a freestanding
car maintenance and service center on the property surrounding
the consolidated rental center.
"We make sure everybody's voices get heard so everybody
has equal access to the rental car customer," said architect
Chandler Ethan of Blunk Demattei Associates. "We work
the allocations from the big players to the small players
so nobody gets left without a piece of the pie."
From the air, the consolidated rental car facility resembles
a person with outstretched arms holding a large ball. The
"arms" are a half- circular elevated roadway that
allows the ferry buses to pull up, unload the customers and
continue down the ramp back to the airport.
Once inside, customers are directed to the third floor via
large escalators or through one of three elevator cores that
have three high-speed elevators each.
The customer service center is cooled with a massive central
plant system that will eventually feed the new car rental
company service facilities.
Pearson Engineering of Phoenix of designed the central plant.
Contractors also built a 185-ft. utility tunnel under the
project.
"There are some really big units up on the roof,"
said Marty Schrieber, the Phoenix division president of Clark
Engineers, which designed the site mechanical engineering
and plumbing. "There's a really complex fire protection
and plumbing plan that is just huge from the physical standpoint."
Phoenix-based MacKay Plumbing is installing the piping.
Once the rental transaction is complete, customers are off
to the massive garage spread out over three levels. The garage
can accommodate more than 5,400 cars. In the interest of efficiency,
designers created massive 61 by 61-ft. bays supported by huge
columns and beams. A 5-in. post- tensioned deck ties the columns
together. One large, 85-ft. beam, dubbed the "Barney
Beam" for its purple color-coding in the plans, supports
more than 1 million sq. ft. alone.
"This is a very complicated design," said structural
engineer Bob Stanley of Nabar Stanley Brown in Phoenix. "It's
a very large space, which is unusual because you usually have
a 30- by 30- ft. grid, so you have twice the spacing but still
only one column."
Other critical design factors included concerns about vibration
from the large buses and the expansion and contraction of
such a large concrete structure.
"It's a big challenge on that end trying to keep the
joints so the building could expand and contract in the heat
and still work independently," Stanley added
Although much of the 180-acre site is being used, there is
still room for plenty of landscaping. Designers plan to use
iconic plants native to Arizona to give the rental car center
a sense of place.
"The main thing was to create an image of Arizona so
when visitors fly in from around the world, they see Arizona
when they land," said landscape architect Steve Lohide
of Logan Simpson Design. "It's not like Chicago or Orlando.
It's definitely Arizona."
>Big Numbers
on a Big Job
>Streamlined
New Baggage Handlers to Speed Travelers
>Tucson
International Takes Off
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