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Prefab Case Study: BJC Parkland Medical Office Building

Speed to market drives the growing need for prefabrication in the healthcare industry. TJ Wies Prefab enhances efficiency and reduces costs, making it the preferred method for healthcare facilities rapidly expanding and upgrading infrastructure to meet their evolving demands. This approach helps medical professionals provide broad services in modern facilities nationwide, like the BJC Parkland Medical Offices in Farmington, Missouri. 

Without prefabrication, the construction industry faces significant issues in the coming years. We lose qualified, skilled tradesmen to retirement yearly without a growing interest in trades-driven construction from younger generations. Material shortages, long procurement times for essential parts, and increasing prices make it challenging to meet project deadlines, delaying the opening of critical hospital facilities. 

Hospital projects require considerable capital investment each day that construction is in progress. Rental equipment, deliveries, manpower, and facility closures drain resources over time.

At TJ Wies Prefab, we tackle these challenges head-on. Recognizing BJC Hospital as a leader in construction efficiency in the Midwest, we were eager to collaborate with Impact Strategies on this project. 

On the BJC Parkland Medical Office Building, TJ Wies Prefab not only saved valuable time in the project schedule but also shortened the jobsite duration. The value of this expedited construction process is evident in how quickly we completed the building enclosure, allowing the next phase of work to begin. 

We achieved the building enclosure for the Parkland MOB in only five working days. A conventionally built two-story medical office building would take one to two months to reach the enclosure phase. 

Completing this project quickly and efficiently saved money and allowed reinvestment into other projects, facilities, and even overall medical costs.

"The exterior building shell work was originally scheduled for the winter months. However, partnering with TJ Wies Prefab reduced the traditional two-month timeline for a stick-framed, sheathed project to a five-day installation to enclose the building. The pre-planning, coordination, and communication throughout the build were second to none."

TJ Wies Prefab incorporated full pre-finished wall panels and backup-style panels to maintain the design aesthetic and precise alignment of building joints. Our pre-finished panels come with exterior cladding pre-installed and finished. The backup-style panels, equipped with sheeting and an air vapor barrier, provide structural support, allowing brickwork on the exterior cladding to proceed.

Acknowledging the significance of the required alignment accuracy, the project team preemptively adjusted plans to include a 'hold-to' dimension for the accompanying aluminum window systems. Their idea remedied the possibility of human error.

Our team continually engineers new methods for aligning full-height panels with storefront windows. For the Parkland project, which features ribbon-style openings instead of punched windows, we implemented an innovative process to ensure the accuracy of the precise rough openings. This allowed the window installation to start immediately, saving the owner both time and money while enhancing the overall quality and durability of the structure.

Travis Schwartz, the project manager, praised the prefab process, "TJ Wies’s prefabrication process significantly boosts efficiency, accuracy, and prefab expertise. Their process was crucial in expediting the schedule of a recent two-story medical office building in Farmington, MO. The exterior building shell work was originally scheduled for the winter months. However, partnering with TJ Wies Prefab reduced the traditional two-month timeline for a stick-framed, sheathed project to a five-day installation to enclose the building. The pre-planning, coordination, and communication throughout the build were second to none.” These compliments reflect our team's exceptional efforts and problem-solving abilities.

It also affirms our primary goals: optimizing time savings with expedited building enclosure times and guaranteeing precision panel installation.

Balancing time constraints and mitigating inaccuracies are crucial for preserving project schedules, as delays impact the transition to interior work following roof construction.

The BJC Parkland Medical Office Building project highlights the transformative potential of prefabrication in healthcare construction.Harnessing innovative prefab methods and precision engineering solutions, TJ Wies Prefab and Impact Strategies demonstrated the ability to achieve significant time and cost savings while ensuring precision and quality. As the industry continues to evolve, embracing prefabrication will be crucial for meeting the demands of the ever-evolving healthcare landscape.

A Data Comparison between Prefab & Conventional

Specific Bill of Materials 

At TJ Wies Prefab, we model all construction projects using VDC. This advanced modeling allows us to generate a bill of materials specifying the required lengths and qualities, resulting in ZERO WASTE. The average material waste for a conventional build is 7%.  

Streamlined Structural Design

The fully finished exterior walls and backup-style panels required robust steel reinforcement at the base, which conventionally necessitated a separate phase of carpentry and ironwork to install steel C channels atop embeds. TJ Wies Prefab enhanced project efficiency by integrating the C channels into the exterior wall panels, allowing welders to connect the integrated steel to the embeds in the concrete seamlessly.

Building Enclosure Schedule Savings

Prefabricated wall panels were set in just five days at the Parkland Medical Office Building, compared to the conventional method (requiring exterior framing, sheeting, an air barrier, and an EIFS finish), which would take up to 45 working days to reach enclosure. 

Manpower on Site Savings 

The prefabrication process required considerably fewer workers to set the pre-finished wall panels, as opposed to the conventional method that necessitated extensive framing, sheeting, and plastering stages.This led to a 60-70% decrease in on-site manpower during the erection of the building envelope.

Equipment on Site and Duration

Prefab also minimized equipment duration to only five days with one delivery of seven trailer loads of wall panels, a 60-ton crane, and a 60-foot boom lift. The conventional method typically requires 45 days of equipment, including material deliveries twice weekly for six weeks, two boom lifts, an all-terrain 40-foot scissor lift, and tube and clamp scaffolding on 60% of the building exterior.  

Revolutionize your project. Contact our team today to explore the benefits of prefabrication on your next build.

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