Our involvement with Duncan Stroik, the architect for the St. Joseph Cathedral project, began with a call from a La Crosse, Wis., brick-layer business agent trying to find qualified stone contractors for a large church project there. It\u2019s unusual for business agents to make these calls, but in this case they were assisting the local La Crosse general contractor.<\/p>\n
The project under construction was the Shrine Church of Our Lady Guadalupe.<\/a>. We called back and received the name of the contractor and architect. That was in 2004, and we went through many rounds of budgeting, pricing and submitting samples in 2006, we were awarded the project in a competitive bid and finished the project in January 2008. (You can view some pictures of the Shrine Church on our Website<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The Shrine Church had its challenges but overall I think the entire process went well. Duncan Stroik must have felt the same way; in the fall of 2007, he called and talked about proposals to the Archdiocese of Sioux Falls for a large church remodel project. He wanted us to attend a jobsite meeting to meet the contractor, owner\u2019s rep and a few select donors. <\/p>\n The meeting, in April 2008, started our involvement with the St. Joseph Cathedral renovation. All this started with a call five years ago from a business agent in La Crosse. (I must send him a box of apples at Christmas and say thanks.)<\/p>\n Budget Pricing <\/strong><\/p>\n During the April 2008 meeting, which took place in the church, I met all the parties involved and got to see the entire scope of the project. One of my main goals was to spend time with the owner\u2019s representative; this person usually calls the shots early on in the process.<\/p>\n His message was clear to me: Duncan Stroik strongly recommended your company to do our work, and you\u2019re somewhat locally based, so we will work with you \u2013 providing Twin City Tile and Marble hires some Sioux Falls labor, and that you give us competitive pricing and quality marbles. I was given a set of preliminary drawings and sent back to St Paul to start forming the stone budget.<\/p>\n We\u2019re fortunate at Twin City Tile to be a source to local contractors to do budgetary work in stone and tile for big projects being developed by an owner and architect. I use the word fortunate because we\u2019re eventually awarded more of the budget jobs that we lose. <\/p>\n The pain factor of losing a job you\u2019ve been budgeting for months is based on the size of the folder in your bidding file cabinet. No doubt it\u2019s painful to lose a nice project at the eleventh hour to your competitor. Even though doing budget work takes company overhead with no guarantees, I always want to be the one getting the call about a new and exciting project.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to remember two facts about this project. First off, the interior of the church is getting an extreme makeover with new stonework and new liturgical painting – no new construction or moving walls to form new spaces. Second, the architect who designed St Joseph Cathedral a century ago is also the architect who designed the St. Paul Cathedral \u2013 and Duncan Stroik referenced stone details and colors from the St. Paul Cathedral to details for the St. Joseph Cathedral.<\/p>\n During the summer of 2008, we worked on budget pricing from a variety of information from the architect. There were colorful watercolor renderings from Stroik\u2019s office showing the floor patterns and altars. There also were some drawings of the large cubic items. (Some of these can be viewed on Stroik\u2019s Website<\/a>.)<\/p>\n We also went to the jobsite and measured the existing to get complete quantities of floors and walls. And, of course, we went to the St. Paul Cathedral to see details we had to match on the St. Joseph project.<\/p>\n In November 2008, we presented our first budget to Sioux Falls Construction (the contractor). Since our prices were based on a variety of information, rather than from a single set of drawings, our budget contained many qualifications describing what was going to be supplied. <\/p>\n I should note that the goal of any budget exercise is to give the owner a realistic price and scope of what they will eventually get. As long as the architect doesn\u2019t make changes during their preparation of working drawings, your pricing should not change. <\/p>\n Any changes by the architect or owner should be documented during the budget pricing. We were confident that we could provide an accurate budget based on the information given to us. What we weren\u2019t confident about was the the architect and owner getting competitive stone pricing.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve spent the last three blogs telling about the history of the project; I\u2019ve included this to create a foundation for the actual project. From this point forward, I\u2019ll show how the job developed with shop drawings, trips to Italy and the stone. Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n
After the 100% construction documents are priced, you never want to hear the owner utter these words: \u201cThis is much more money than we thought. We\u2019re going to get another price.\u201d<\/p>\n