Thinking Big Produces Impact

By William J. Angelo, Editor-in-Chief

	ANGELO

Big Easy, Big Apple, Big Sky, big time, big league–our language is replete with usage of the wonderfully simple yet descriptive word, "big". And so is this issue of Design-Build magazine. We love big projects and we celebrate their bigness because they make an immediate and lasting beneficial impact on our neighborhoods, environment, lifestyle and wallet. But big projects are not just limited to large size, they also include smaller ones that create meaningful impact.

In recent history, bigness used to be associated with massive American Depression-era public works projects or Soviet-style industrialization efforts. We still can picture plenty of muscle at work on projects that pushed technological limits on a vast scale. While the public sector continues funding many fine big projects, the private sector now is weighing in as global competition drives companies relentlessly for profit and survival. Mergers and acquisitions across the globe have created megagiants in many industries.

This drive for bigness now is a major economic factor for architectural, engineering and construction firms. Once considered megaprojects, $1-billion projects now are considered, well, mundane.

While we have featured some challenging billion-dollar projects in previous issues, this time we have four features that look at different aspects of bigness–concept, scope and impact.

Our cover story examines the design and construction of the $715.3-million, 12-mile-long Hiawatha Light Rail Line connecting downtown Minneapolis with the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America, the biggest mall in the U.S., located in Bloomington. A joint venture comprised of Granite Construction Co., C.S. McCrossan, Parsons Transportation Group and Edwards and Kelcey delivered the project 27 days early and the project already is having a big impact. Ridership is exceeding Twin City expectations and the project is changing commuter, shopping and development patterns. This was the first light rail project in the state and it may spark development of a proposed regional transit system.

The project, which involves numerous state, regional and local agencies, includes successfully integrating track, tunnels, bridges, stations and a state-of-the-art operations and maintenance facility into the urban fabric of three contiguous cities.

In Gilbert, Ariz., one of the fastest growing municipalities in the U.S., town fathers helped pioneer the use of design-build in the state to fast-track over $622 million of new capital projects. Design-build was critical to meeting Gilbert’s infrastructure needs for numerous fire stations, a community development building, reservoirs and water treatment and reclamation plants.

In Luverne, Ala., South Korean auto giant Hyundai chose design-build to deliver a needed 500,000-sq-ft, $25-million metal stamping plant to meet demand for its sedans and SUVs. The plant required unusual structural and foundation elements to accommodate complex and massive robotic manufacturing processes.

Finally, we will examine the lasting and beneficial symbiotic business relationship that exists between two quality-driven giants, Walgreen Co. and Korte Co. They have just collaborated on their 23rd Walgreens facility for a total of over 5.4 million sq ft of commercial space.

We also have two viewpoints, one from Chuck Dahill on public owners and design-build usage and another from Sherif Fouad Hashem on a new theoretical method of design-build planning and schedule compression.

These owners and design-build practitioners know how to think and act big. They see the big picture and they also like design-build’s big benefits–speed, quality and savings.

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