Value engineering personified

How methodology is ensuring projects are not overpaying for products or services

By Ron Treister

Today’s construction is changing. The current “need for speed” has made tight timelines and professionally planned job scheduling more important than ever. It is common that one trade must work on one specific portion of a building-in-process, while another toils concurrently in another area of the structure.

Owners do not want surprises, especially ones that occur on contractors’ bottom-line invoices. They also do want to have their buildings ready for full occupancy and total performance, according to initially agreed-upon scheduling projections.

As a result of the above, the term “value engineering” now is a much sought-after tenet within today’s construction industry. In a nutshell, value engineering is a wellthought-out methodology that assures that the building is not overpaying for products or services when other options of equal quality and performance are offered at less expensive price points.

With this mindset, true product quality remains the ultimate goal, with the entire value engineering “model” focusing on the optimal usage of any available budget.

An excellent example of this process recently took place in Park City, Utah at the construction site on a ski-in/ski-out hotel in the center of Canyons Village. The luxury getaway offers a slope-side retreat where modernist design has been implemented to inspire every angle. The project, consisting of three buildings five- or six-stories high, planned to have 85,500 square feet of hardwood flooring installed within.

DFS Flooring Utah’s Ken Clifford, the blue-chip flooring contractor, which handled the hardwood installation, says the company has worked with the owners of this project for a number of years. “We always want to do the best possible work for them. And if we can save them money while doing so, well, of course we will. When the architectural specs first came in, they called for a sound-dampening rubber mat membrane to be glued down on the subfloor, before installation of the actual hardwood material.””

At first glance, it sounded like a good plan. Ironically, Clifford says that soon thereafter, a Bostik regional sales manager stopped by for the regular presentation of his portfolio of products.

“One, which really interested me, the Ultra-Set ® SingleStep2™, a one-component hardwood flooring adhesive that also offers moisture control and a sound reduction membrane all-in-one,” Clifford says. “Right away, the words ‘value engineering’ materialized in my mind. I thought about how much time, labor and product expense could be saved if we were to go with this product and eliminate having to install the rubber mat.”

The Park City hardwood flooring installation consisted of 7-inch pre-finished engineered wood planks for the guest rooms. Dining rooms consisted of a similar product, but were to be installed unfinished. Main areas such as the entryways to each building were specified to include 12-inch oak planks with an attractive wire brushed surface finish.

All these areas were at first specified to include having the rubber mat beneath the wood flooring to minimize transfer of sound. “I kept wondering just how much money and, how much time would be saved were we to simply install with the Bostik system and forgo using the rubber mat,” Clifford says.

So, in the spirit of true partnership, Clifford alerted both the building owners and also, the California-based architectural/design firm. “We wanted to help them choose the right materials... and at the best cost.”

As it turned out, everyone was positive about this potential value engineering situation. And why not?

Via the ICC sound rating system, the rubber sound mat had a score of 50 regarding transfer of noise between floors. Without purchasing the mat or the adhesive to bond it to the subfloor and all the planning and labor necessary to do so, the client saved roughly $400,000.

Clifford’s crews had less work to do overall based on having no rubber sound mat installation (spread glue, lay out the rubber, wait for it to dry before starting to install the hardwood flooring, etc.), so they were able to finish the job earlier.

And there is more. Jake Stadler, Bostik’s Market Manager for Hardwood and Resilient Floor Systems, says putting down a single-step layer of adhesive saves on the thickness of the flooring installed as opposed to results when using a glue/rubber/glue/floor. This is especially meaningful when every inch around doors and overall headspace is critical.

Stadler says that rolls of acoustical rubber can be quite heavy. In addition to installing them, contractors have to load them up, cart them to the jobsite (along with pails of adhesive) etc. “It sure is easier to get less sound transfer between floors by installing a one-component installation product such as Ultra-Set ® SingleStep2™. By doing all this, we are saving lots of money, too.” CCR