Category Archives: Construction

Kitchell receives recognition from the Arizona Industrial Commission

 

 

The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH) recently honored Kitchell with the Exemplary Award for Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) at its annual Industrial Commission of Arizona Day at the Capitol. Kitchell is the first construction company to ever win the award.

“Kitchell has demonstrated a tireless commitment to safety, evidenced by VPP achievement on several of its projects, and the dedication of the company’s entire workforce to actively living and promoting a safety culture,” said ADOSH Assistant Director Jessie Atencio.

Over the past several years, Kitchell has made great strides on weaving safety into the company’s culture, becoming a de facto industry leader in safety and health. This effort extends not only to the company’s direct employees, but also to ensuring its subcontractors are aligned and engaged with safety protocols and procedures. The statistics overwhelmingly show success in this effort, with an OSHA incident rate for the entire company 76 percent lower than the national industry average and trade partner employee injuries decreasing significantly over the past few years.

Kitchell was also recently recognized for its safety efforts at a national level, with a Construction Safety Excellence Award by the Associated General Contractors of America. The awards criteria examines management’s commitment to safety, active employee participation, safety training, work site hazard identification and control and safety program innovation

“Our safety best practices add tremendous value to our culture,” said Kitchell Contractors President Steve Whitworth. “The bottom line is that this commitment extends to our families and our communities. We want everyone home safely, every day.”

Kitchell has achieved VPP designation on several of its job sites in recent years, including Chandler Regional Medical Center, the Center at Val Vista, Phoenix Children’s Hospital Emergency Department expansion and Banner Casa Grande Medical Center. The company also achieved recognition at its Phoenix headquarters to reinforce its commitment to safety beyond project sites, to include locations that house administrative functions.

“Earning VPP Star Status is an accomplishment that is achieved through a deliberate process involving employees and management at all levels,” Atencio said. “Kitchell realizes that this is a journey that never ends.”

VPP is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) highest program of recognition across the United States. Companies and jobsites that are awarded the VPP Star designation demonstrate exemplary and comprehensive safety and health management systems to achieve illness and injury rates that are more than 50 percent below the national average. The VPP program is completely voluntary and a collaborative relationship between ADOSH and business, in which employers must submit an application and undergo a thorough on-site evaluation by a team of safety and health professionals. Sites earning the designation are periodically re-evaluated in order to remain in the program.

Last year’s Exemplary Awards honorees were Raytheon and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.

Studies have shown that companies with a focus on health and safety experience significantly lower workers’ compensation claims, higher productivity and less turnover.

With a little help from their friends, h/dc solves big puzzle for BIG YAM

puzzle-houseIn the building world, we are constantly solving puzzles, some more complicated than others. hardison/downey construction’s recent completion of the 65,000-square-foot YAM Worldwide Center was just that: one big puzzle. But fortunately Kitchell’s ability to mobilize and engage its in-house services helped solve it.

As the new home of BIG YAM Ad Agency, Sneaky Big Studios and several other YAM Holdings affiliates, each of the projects under this roof had its own consultant team and set of documents. h/dc held a total of four separate general contracts between the shell building, with two levels of underground parking and three major complicated tenant improvements (TIs). In August 2015, the post-tension concrete shell structure was already under construction and the h/dc team was challenged to implement a total coordination and document management strategy, since all three separate TI jobs (with three separate design and engineering teams) were combined under one permit.

Early on, says h/dc Senior Project Manager Eric Rogers, the team realized the coordination effort between four design and engineering teams was challenging: enter Kitchell’s in-house Virtual Construction (ViCon) team.

“Having the in-house tools to be able to manage a complex project like this was a great illustration of our services all working collaboratively,” Rogers said.

A digital scan of the building structure was overlaid into a BIM model, which had already eliminated conflicts. This brought even more issues and conflicts to resolution before they became costly delays, by bridging the gap between drawings/models and reality. Kitchell’s IT team was integral to the project, as SharePoint also played a major role in the simple management and coordination of information flow to the design teams and a long list of owner vendors.

As the project moved into construction, Bluebeam Studio became a very reliable and useful tool. A station was completely dedicated to the electronic management of the document set on-site, complete with a touch screen monitor. The document set was uploaded to a Bluebeam Studio session, so the project team could have access to the documents on both their desktops and iPads. In the studio session, drawings could be checked out and updated by anyone with access. The superintendents were able to post pictures of field conditions to the drawings.

“As you can imagine, with this many designers and engineers all crossing paths in a single document set, tracking and coordination of changes was really important,” Rogers said.

By using a hyperlink function, the team was able to highlight the areas on a drawing that was revised and linked back to the document that made the revision. This saved the field personnel time by being able to reference the drawings and revisions without having to carry around a set of paper drawings or return to the trailers.

rfi-generation

The need for real-time access to this information was critical. The team used iPads in the field for quick reference and access to the latest information and any relevant revisions being tracked in the electronic set. When a larger screen was needed, the site team and subcontractors used the document station to review the plans, enlarge details and generate further questions and clarifications on the fly. This kept decision-making moving along, and allowed for a marked-up screen shot to be attached to an RFI for response in real time. This constant communication flow reduced response time to the field for implementation.

When the time came for punch lists, the team again turned to Bluebeam Studio.

“A little time spent on establishing the punch document set and they were off,” Rogers said. “Bluebeam allows photos taken with your iPad to be tagged to the punch item on the plan. In most cases, this greatly reduced the ‘wandering’ for a subcontractor to find and correct the punch item.”

At the end of the project the team was able to include the fully posted set of electronic documents as part of the closeout manuals turned over to ownership.

Puzzle solved: while building value for project owners, teams and each other.