Estimating errors leave empty spaces on the University of Wisconsin-
Posted on July 29, 2010
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Daily Reporter (Milwaukee), Mar 27, 2009 by Paul Snyder
There is an empty, roughed-out space in the basement of a new building on the University of Wisconsin-Platteville campus.
The floor is part concrete slab, part dirt. The walls are part concrete block, part exposed frame and insulation. Incomplete designs lay scattered on sawhorses and makeshift planning desks.
It was not supposed to be this way. In fact, the unfinished space originally was the centerpiece of Engineering Hall’s design.
But estimates for the state project, which opened in January, were so rough, designers thought it would run out of money. So the university abandoned what was supposed to be a clean room and characterization lab.
Rob Cramer, UW-Platteville’s associate chancellor for administrative services, stood in the room March 20 explaining how the space can be salvaged, but he said the state estimating process that led to the empty room may never be perfect.
“Construction is such a global market now,” he said. “It’s hard to project three or four years out. And the fact of the matter is something like the market in China affects the price of steel in Platteville.”
The state is trying to deliver more accurate estimates by performing more pre-design work before project approval. The UW System is helping to steer the conversation after several of its projects lost scope or were significantly altered due to rough estimates driving fixed budgets.
“You put together these estimates based on nothing more, really, than square footage,” said David Miller, UW System vice president for capital planning and budget. “The project is enumerated, and then an architect is hired to design to the number.
“It’s about a one-in-a-million shot that they’ll be able to hit that number with everything you want.”
Recovering lost space
Engineering Hall is not a one-in-a-million project.
The clean room and lab were supposed to be a nano-research center for engineering students. But when the state approved $27.9 million for the building in the 2005-07 budget, it did so with only a rough idea of what the building would cost.
“And early on in the design process,” Miller said, “we started getting reports that we were going to run over budget.”
So the university reduced the project scope by cutting, among other things, the clean room and lab, said Peter Davis, UW- Platteville’s interim director of facilities management. He said the university and the project’s architect, La Crosse-based River Architects Inc., whittled the project down to meet the $27.9 million estimate.
In a cruel twist, the bids for the project came in at about $23 million, leaving more than enough money for the clean room and lab space if they were included in final designs. But those items already had been tabbed for future completion, and $1 million of the money saved through the lower bids was set aside for the work.
“It’s not like they cut a wing off the building, but you can’t just add that space back,” Davis said. “If you’ve moved a wall in 2 feet, it becomes very expensive to redesign or move that wall back 2 feet.”
Now the university is stuck trying to build out the space, Cramer said.
“But because it was never scoped out in detail,” he said, “you realize a lot of things now that you would’ve done differently when you built the building in terms of mechanical systems and square footage.”
Cramer said the completed lab and clean room likely will need an HVAC system, and some of the completed work in the room will need to be redone.
The university wants to complete the work for the fall semester, Cramer said, but is still working through the design. Builders, he said, will now have to contend with student traffic whenever construction starts.
Cramer gave no timeline for the project.
Fixing a flawed system
David Helbach, an administrator for the state Department of Administration’s Division of State Facilities and secretary to the state Building Commission, recently convinced the commission to release $500,000 in state money for more pre-design work to attain better project estimates.
Helbach is still working on recommendations for better estimates and project delivery methods and is expected to discuss those ideas with the commission in April.
“The whole process of estimates needs improvement,” said state Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah and member of the commission. “We can’t keep missing them and saying, ‘Oh well.’”
Cramer, who served as secretary to the Building Commission, said proposing change is easy, but finding agreement and implementing a plan are difficult
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