Addition

This project was another excellent opportunity for our hardworking team to showcase their out-of-the-box strategic planning skills as well as their communication skills!

The Project

Our task was to build a 90,000-square-foot wide open warehouse addition to an existing 45,000-square-foot warehouse, complete with fire protection, a fire alarm system, and state-of-the-art inventory tracking.

Our Southwest team completed the project on the rolling plains of sunny Lethbridge County, between Lethbridge city limits and the town of Coaldale.

Lethbridge County is a district in Southern Alberta known for its agricultural economy - particularly wheat crops and high-quality beef production.

The addition is designed for the storage of various types of seed, and we were pleased for an opportunity to apply our many years of agricultural and industrial experience!

Schedule Constraints

The owner had a tight timeline to get the new warehouse building ready to start storing their products - roughly nine months.

To help move the project timeline up, the Southwest team produced additional labour resources and found ways to complete tasks with greater efficiency, which reduced the project schedule by nearly two months.

Our team regularly met with the ownership group throughout the project to discuss strategies to reduce the project timeline. This open line of communication proved to be very effective, and the owners were accommodating and continually open to our recommendations on ways to shorten the timeline for them to get access to their building - while still delivering value and results.

Our diligent and hardworking crews worked through extreme temperatures in Alberta’s famous prairie summers, which helped us to erect the building structure, complete the wall, and finish the roof cladding in record time.

Positive Relationships with Trades

Site work and excavation, concrete, electrical, fire sprinkler and HVAC were critical trades on this project.

For effective execution, Southwest drew upon long-standing relationships with local sub-trades in the Lethbridge area. Maintaining positive and genuine relationships with our trades is key to delivering a top-quality product ahead of schedule and on budget for any project.

Special Considerations

As with many of our other projects, there may be several factors that contribute to an increased project timeline or how we approach day-to-day tasks.

Here are two special considerations that we encountered during this build:

 Prairie Terrain

Alberta is renowned for its flat terrain and severe summer weather, so our worksite required extensive site work to ensure we were able to build properly.

We imported thousands of cubic metres of clean clay fill to raise the building’s elevation so that we could maintain positive drainage on the site. We also installed significant piping underground to drain water from the roof and worksite away to a storm retention pond.

 Supply & Material Delays

Material procurement was a significant mountain to climb for this project.

As the project completion date neared, there were still components that were on back order that we were concerned would not be shipped in time. Much of the products in question were specialized electrical and fire alarm equipment required for the warehouse to operate safely.

It’s noteworthy that our finding ways to reduce the project timeline is a direct result of our many years of experience and open communication - all things that were more or less within our control.

Outside-of-box thinking was essential. Southwest worked with the trades, suppliers, and building inspectors to come up with solutions, and ended up installing temporary components to ensure the building met proper safe storage and occupation standards.