Border Crossing Bridges Binational Differences

By Paul Rosta

A new building in the remote North American prairie houses what may be some of the world’s best-traveled workers. Every day, each one can make hundreds of international trips and still be home for dinner.

Although this sounds suspiciously like a top-secret experiment in futuristic transportation, the truth is more prosaic. The building in question, which opened in September, is the centerpiece of a $31.2-million shared port of entry that straddles the U. S.-Canada border. To overcome the intricacies of constructing a binational project, the U.S. General Services Administration selected design-build with bridging documents as the project delivery method.

With 100,000 sq ft of space distributed among the main building and six ancillary structures, the complex fills a critical function. Located at the northern end of U.S. Interstate 15 between the tiny towns of Sweet Grass, Mont., and Coutts, Alberta, the port is "the only gateway for the prairie region," says Dane Ashlie, senior project manager for the Canada Border Service Agency’s Real Property and Environmental Directorate.

	Big Sky country's new border crossing successfully overcame complex code, regularly and labor problems.

With 1.3 million travelers and 413,000 shipments passing through it in 2003, the Sweet Grass-Coutts station is the third-largest crossing in the western U.S. and Canada. The new facility houses personnel from a host of Canadian agencies–Canada Border Services Agency, Dept. of Citizenship and Immigration and Canadian Food Inspection Agency. U.S. agencies include Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Dept. of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration.

When the two governments signed the Shared Border Accord in 1996, both nations already had separate projects in the pipeline for the Sweet Grass-Coutts crossing and several other locations, says Jim Oberg, director of GSA’s northern border program. Then U.S. Customs officials "came to us and said, ‘We want to do a joint facility. What will it take?’" So the teams went back to the drawing board. Owing to the change in direction and the complexities of developing a binational project, "we lost a year, and we picked it up by doing design-build," says J. Lach, GSA’s Portland, Ore.-based project manager.

GSA Chief Architect Ed Feiner recommended design-build for Sweet Grass-Coutts because of the June 2000 success of the Lloyd D. George courthouse and federal building project in Las Vegas. "This project lent itself to design-build so well because it was a joint facility," Oberg says. Because of the project’s international nature, design-build delivery would require the contractor, not the governments, to "wrestle with and come up with [unique] solutions for doing a joint facility," such as addressing labor and materials issues, Oberg says. Design-build took the headaches away from the owners and "placed the risk with the entity that was best able to handle the risk," he adds.

Frontier First

Four agencies collaborated on funding: GSA (48.2%), Canada Border Services (43.6%) and the Montana and Alberta transportation departments (4.1% each). Under the shared-border accord, the nations switch off taking the lead on the projects and GSA took its turn with Sweet Grass-Coutts. To prevent the competition from becoming prohibitively expensive for contractors, GSA used a two-step selection process. The agency first evaluated teams’ qualifications and experience, but did not require the costly step of submitting a design or a price. GSA then invited four teams to bid. The successful team leader, Calgary-based Bird Management Ltd., came full circle with its $25.9-million contract award. Half a century earlier, the Canadian side of the crossing was one of the first projects by the then-fledgling company. Bird subcontracted design work to Edmonton-based Kasian Kennedy Architecture.

	Bridging documents laid out requirements for certain governmental areas of the Sweet Grass-Coutts station.

The border station’s specialized requirements called for a hybrid delivery that combined design-build for many key elements with prescriptive design for others. As a result, "we were provided with quite a few guidelines," says Colin Fong, Bird’s project manager. Critical government areas such as search, interview and detention rooms needed virtually complete designs. "If we didn’t specify it in the design, we get what we get," Ashlie explains. That’s why GSA went with bridging documents provided by architects Tim Felchlin and Kate Diamond, of Los Angeles-based Siegel Diamond Architects. They brought design to the 25% to 35% level and specified much of the interior design, including the building footprint, floor plan and room size.

With its skewed grids, multiple pitches and barnlike elements, the main building, in particular, "was a bit more of an architectural statement than your typical design-build structure," says Duane Babiak, project engineer for Calgary-based structural engineering consultant Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. "In all instances I can recall, we were following the parameters that were laid out," Fong says. "Certainly the agencies were very helpful in at least identifying to us what we could and could not do."

	Border was an invisible barrier hurdled by use of native Canadians who could work in U.S. under old treaty.

Design-build required contractor and consultant input on other key elements, such as mechanical, electrical and structural systems. That promoted flexibility. "We had some leeway in terms of coming in with a better mousetrap, so to speak," says Fong. The bridging approach "certainly doesn’t limit using our own value engineering on this project." Probably the biggest and best modification to the buildings was for the structural framing system. The original design called for a composite concrete slab and steel beams, which was modified to an open-web steel joist and slightly thinner slab, says Babiak.

Design-build delivery also helped Sweet Grass-Coutts achieve another distinction. It is the first border station to win certification by the U.S. Green Building Council as a LEED (Leadership Energy and Environmental Design) project. During the five years of design and construction, the team incorporated sustainable principles. Felchlin and Diamond’s bridging documents incorporated such criteria as energy efficiency, environmentally sensitive materials, waste management and water conservation.

"We didn’t spec out how to achieve LEED certification," says Lach. "We did it entirely as a performance spec," leaving it up to the design-build team to choose specific elements, he adds. In response, Kasian Kennedy’s Ken Mah, Merve Weiss and Andre Kroeger developed such sustainable features as exterior finishes, ceiling tile with 90% recycled content and extensive use of natural light.

Double Challenges

From the outset, the project team had to deal with double stakeholders, paired sets of federal, state and local agencies, plus double codes and regulations. To underscore the complexities, Lach notes that his current project, a federal building renovation in Portland, requires 12 to 15 signoffs for any major decision. The new port at Sweet Grass-Coutts needed 80 approvals.

Administrative challenges also cropped up in areas like managing accounts payable. Canada’s share of funding had to take a round trip. As lead agency, GSA administered Canada’s contributions, which were exchanged from Canadian to U.S. dollars. Those funds then were transferred back and exchanged back to Canadian dollars before reaching subcontractors and suppliers on the northern side of the border. "We had to figure out a way of doing this [because as the currencies fluctuate], there can be a dramatic hit on Canada’s budget when they transfer that funding over to us," Oberg says.

The port’s shared main building posed the greatest challenges. Planning had to take into account different regulations. In cases of code differences, "it had to be built to all of the applicable codes, whichever was most stringent," Lach says. Canadian regulations do not require a sprinkler system for a building of that size, but sprinklers were installed to comply with U.S. fire codes, says Ashlie.

	Architectural statements abound at new facility.

One seemingly small difference had far-reaching implications. "Most of the sharing had to be on the U.S. side because our inspectors can carry guns," Oberg says. As a result, the shared locker room had to be on the U.S. side in order to prevent gun-bearing U.S. personnel from violating Canadian regulations. The border also presented labor and materials issues. For example, the elevator shaft is located in the U.S. but the mechanical room is in Canada. Lach notes that there was no international zone that "would have allowed materials and laborers to come in from both sides." In parts of the building straddling the border, "we made sure we were using only Canadian forces or U.S. forces right up to that line," Fong says. "Once they get to the border, they couldn’t step over the line," Lach adds.

"The labor force out here in the middle of nowhere is a challenge in itself," says Henry Ong, the on-site owner’s representative and construction manager for Abide International Inc., Sonoma, Calif. One successful strategy was to hire Canadian Indian workers, such as ironworkers and electricians. Unlike native Americans, native Canadians may work on both sides of the border under a 1794 treaty.

	The most stringent U.S. or Canadian code ruled.

Border-conscious building also was demanded at the 30-meter-long pedestrian bridge that has exactly half of its 4.5-m width in each nation. To comply with labor laws, the Calgary-based subcontractor, Anglia Steel, fielded both U.S. and Canadian crews. Each crew operated a crane to erect half of the prefabricated steel bridge. Native Canadian ironworkers then welded the steel sections together.

Subtle differences also surfaced in structural steel. Although the codes of both countries are fairly close, structural drawings in the U.S. typically display more detailed connection information than they do in Canada, says Babiak from Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. In Canada, the steel fabricator’s consultant, rather than the project structural engineer, often provide those connections, Babiak explains. For the structural engineer, the challenge was "presenting information in a form that the industry on both sides of the border are used to seeing," he says. Since inspectors and other professional personnel may work on both sides of the border, Calgary-based Canspec provided field construction services for the entire project.

Design-build proved especially valuable "when we were hit with a very significant impact in the middle of construction. Design-build helped us not have a delay," Lach says. Ong of Abide International adds: "That’s the beauty of design-build. You can be reviewing the design submittals for the structural [elements] while they’re putting the footings and foundation in."

By Paul Rosta
The author is a correspondent for The McGraw-Hill Cos. He lives in
New York City, where he regularly reports on construction industry issues.

Photo credit: All photos by Timothy Hursley