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HYATT REGENCY: A P3 SUCCESS STORY
By / Robin Brunet
The Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center has been credited as a successful public-private development partnership and an award-winning hospitality center piece. Notably, it was an example of how good labormanagement relationships can help a team surmount technical hurdles and get complex work done on time and on budget.
SMACNA member General Sheet Metal (GSM) was tasked with fabricating the $224-million facility’s exterior metal panels in its Clackamas shop, and its success was contingent upon deploying a talented team of sheet metal workers at a time when the workforce was difficult to muster.
“We benefitted from collaborating with Local 16 to get this job done as smoothly as possible,” says GSM’s Chief Executive Officer Carol Duncan. “By far the biggest challenge was that the project was underway at a time when manpower was extremely tight; there were no people in the hall, and we needed a large volume of reliable workers on the site.”
Local 16 stepped in by actively recruiting new members for the project, and as a result, the Hyatt crew jumped from 150 people to about 250. “Equally important, Local 16 set up a specialized training session for the new recruits to ensure they were fully knowledgeable about the installation process for one of the panel types,” Duncan says.
While the business agents that helped GSM with the Hyatt project have moved on, Vanessa Steward, Local 16’s northwest regional rep #1, speaks of the project’s success as a byproduct of the greater need to forge partnerships in today’s business climate. “People underestimate their importance, but it’s tougher than ever for entrepreneurs to build a business in this labor market, and if they don’t succeed, neither do we,” she says.
Getting Local 16 to intervene on GSM’s behalf for the Hyatt project was as easy as picking up the phone and saying ‘We need more people,’ Duncan says.
“That’s the close relationship we enjoy, and it’s the outcome of both parties actively wanting to make labor-management ties stronger,” she adds. “For some time now, labor and management have needed each other to flourish, and it’s a matter of communicating transparently, ensuring that what each party communicates is heard correctly and not overasking. That’s the recipe. It’s not always easy to maintain, but it’s definitely worth it.”
Common causes also go a long way in bonding between the two parties. “Carol and I are committed to encouraging women and minorities to join our trade and share ideas on how to accomplish this,” Steward says, adding that she became a journeyperson in 2001 and was once employed at GSM (prior to August 2018, when she became the first elected female business agent in Local 16’s 130-year history).
While progress on that front remains a challenge, it’s worth noting that for the Hyatt project, women did 7.5% of the work— more than on most construction sites, according to developer Mortenson Company. Workers of color did 28.1% of the job, coming close to the goal of 30%. Apprentices did 27.4% of the construction work overall, exceeding the target of 20%.
Duncan and Steward demonstrate that, at the end of the day, basic respect for one another’s achievements is the fundamental basis upon which partnerships can flourish. “Vanessa is able to talk to young people, and she brings them in,” Duncan says. “Once they are in training, she checks on them and is genuinely interested in them and their families.”
Steward remarks, “When Carol took over GSM from her husband, she grew the company from 30 people to several hundred, and she’s constantly promoting women and minorities in the sheet metal trade. We have enormous respect for one another, and we look forward to further collaborations.”
The 14-storey, 600-room Hyatt features more than 440,000 square feet of floor space designed to LEED Gold standards, along with a 175,000 square foot parking garage with the ability to expand to host 120,000 square feet of additional office space. An estimated 751,927 work hours were required to complete the project.
GSM used ACM and Morin panels as well as Parklex facades. “There were many challenges, including the fact that this was a congested worksite, so coordinating on-time deliveries of panels was critical,” Duncan says.
Local 16 recently became a member of the SMART Northwest Regional Council (which focuses on enhancing job opportunities, wages, benefits, and working conditions for union members), and Steward points out that this fortifies labor-management relationships.
“That’s because the council is comprised of Locals 16, 23, 55, 66, and 103—with a range from Alaska to Portland and east to Montana,” she says. “General Sheet Metal participates in the council, as do other companies, and it enables them to tap into projects outside of their normal jurisdictions by gaining information about regional markets, workforce situations, competing non-union signatories, and so forth.”▪
Robin Brunet’s journalism has been published in over 150 magazines, newspapers, websites, and other media across Canada and the United States since 1982.
