Articles
Materials, selection & how we build
Notes from the field on how we build: project guidance, material comparisons, and the occasional how-to for the trade.
Parking garage construction: what decides how long it lasts
Stand on the top deck of a ten-year-old parking garage and look at the joints. If they are sealed and dry, the structure was built and maintained correctly. If…
Read the article →Cold storage construction: building a warehouse that stays cold
A freezer warehouse is finished when it has held its setpoint for a week with the doors cycling and product inside, not when the last panel is set. We put that…
Read the article →Urgent care and outpatient clinic build-outs that open on the date
The space was a mattress store. It had a glass front, a slab, a sixteen-foot ceiling and one restroom. Fourteen weeks later it needed to be a clinic with eight…
Read the article →Building an event venue or banquet hall that opens on the date
A venue owner books the first wedding before the roof is on. That booking is a contract with a deposit and a family, and it does not move because a steel deliv…
Read the article →Coworking build-outs: dense offices, quiet walls, a fixed open date
Walk a finished coworking floor and count the doors. A conventional office of the same size might have fifteen. A flex-office floor can have sixty, plus a doze…
Read the article →Building grocery and convenience stores that open on the lease date
On a grocery job the first drawing that has to be right is not the floor plan. It is the refrigeration schedule. Where the condensers sit, how the line sets ru…
Read the article →Bank branch build-outs: vault, drive-up and the brand package
The vault door arrives on a flatbed and weighs more than the rest of the branch's millwork combined. Where it lands, and whether the floor under it was designe…
Read the article →Building a veterinary clinic: drains, noise, imaging and finishes
The hose bib in the kennel run tells you everything about a veterinary clinic. Somebody is going to wash that floor down every day, with a chemical strong enou…
Read the article →Building a childcare center that passes licensing the first time
A childcare center has two opening dates, and only one of them is on our schedule. The first is the day construction finishes. The second is the day the state…
Read the article →Podium slabs in multifamily: the deck that carries the building
The morning a podium slab pours, the site is quiet except for the pump. Everything above it, four or five floors of wood-framed apartments, is waiting on that…
Read the article →Self-storage construction: site, unit mix and the first rental day
On a self-storage site the customer never sees most of what we build. They see a gate that opens, a driveway wide enough for a rented box truck, a door that ro…
Read the article →Brewery and taproom construction: tanks, drains and opening night
The tanks arrived before the slab was ready for them, which is the most expensive way to learn that a brewhouse is built around its equipment and not the other…
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