Denver News Agency

Category Project Denver News Agency Owner Denver News Agency General Contractor Architects Engineer Civil Engineer Submitted By Ludvik Electric Co.

LUDVIK ELECTRIC MAKING THE NEWS
What makes this project unique?

• It is not often that a contractor has the opportunity to design and build a single project for two individual entities that have been fierce competitors for 114 years.  Ludvik Electric Co. had this good fortune, as they were privileged to become a part of the team chosen to construct an office building for The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post.  Due to the government’s requirements that both the entities remain autonomous, each design had to be independent and remain secret.  The other two agencies occupying the building are the Denver Newspaper Agency, joint operator of each newspaper, and the Media News Group, owner of The Denver Post.  Dealing individually with these four groups, each with their unique design ideas along with their respective Architects, while maintaining uniformity for the overall building was a unique challenge.
• The vision for this new structure was a 595,000 square feet, Class A office building with eleven stories, that would include 7,877 square feet of ground floor retail space, a 231 seat auditorium for public use, the entire fifth and sixth floors consisting of 45,000 square feet of newsroom area per floor, and a 5-story 667 space parking garage – all on 62,082 square foot of property located in downtown Denver.  This location would have three electrical substations serve the building, giving it triple redundant power.
• One of Ludvik foremost obstacles to overcome was with the 3-D coordination of the mechanical and electrical systems due to the unique “boot” shape of the building and the limited amount of vertical chases through the building.  To overcome this challenge, Ludvik Electric elected to utilize their in-house design team to do the electrical engineering.  This provided better coordination of the design and construction documents.  It also provided consistency for our construction team.  An example of this would be the base building fixtures.  Each Architect had an independent and different idea as to what their design requirements would be for the respective agencies.  Ultimately, it was agreed by all to utilize a consistent building theme with a blend of unique fixtures for each agency. 

Since both newsrooms operate their daily paper within the building, a 12,000 square foot data center is a critical link for getting the paper out on time every day.  Additional challenges were added by locating the Data Center on the 7th floor.  This location increased the amount of power distribution from the first floor and created challenges with the coordination due to the compressed ceiling height caused by the raised floor.  The team designed, constructed and had the data center on-line 90-days before the newspapers moved into the building.  This enabled a flawless move into the new facility.
Another unique challenge was the design build team permitted each agency the flexibility to generate changes to the design up to 60-days of construction completion without moving the scheduled completion date.  This allowed for the agencies to configure their spaces right up to the move in date.  The changes amounted to a 45% increase to our contract.

The final success of this project was attributed to the partnership of our construction/design team which led to direct collaboration during the construction process.   This minimized the amount of time it took to coordinate construction processes and to implement advancing design concepts.
To determine the characteristics of the design build team and their contractual relationships, see attached Exhibit 1.
Design build contract format with level of risk assumption, including when cost and schedule were guaranteed in the process:

• Our design build subcontract was originally based on a design narrative and our proposal.  As schematic and then construction design documents progressed, price checks were prepared as needed, so the design build team could evaluate the overall budget with the Owners.  Once final construction documents were completed, they were priced and these documents became our construction contract.

The light fixtures had the highest risk, since there were so many differing design options from the Architects and Owners.  Ludvik had to maintain control of the types and number of light fixtures in order to sustain their budget.  To minimize this risk, a list of the 4,287 fixtures and the 115 different fixture types broken down by each area, along with unit prices depicting how much each area had to spend was issued to the General Contractor and the Architects.  Upon completion, the original light fixture budget was maintained.

Safety View:
Ludvik Electric has a zero incident/ accident safety policy.  We aggressively make safety one of foremost priorities.  Weekly safety meetings are mandated per Ludvik standards.  Since this project was design build, one of the suggestions that came from one of these meetings was to provide permanent light fixtures in the garage and stair towers, which greatly increased all contractors’ safety.  Ludvik Electric logged over 76,000 man-hours and had zero lost time accidents with only two minor first aid incidents.
Thanks to collaboration between the in-house design team and staff of electrical construction professionals, Ludvik Electric Co. “Makes the News” as it brings together 114 year old rivals into the new Denver Newspaper Agency building.