The Professional Contractor - Winter2017

THE PROFESSIONAL

WINTER 2017

A Publication of the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts, Inc.

SEAPORT BOOM A BOON TO SUBCONTRACTORS

In construction, every job you perform has its own unique exposures and contractual requirements.

Having an insurance partner to help assess and manage your risk is essential.

Serving the construction industry

BUSINESS INSURANCE SURETY BONDS EMPLOYEE BENEFITS PERSONAL INSURANCE HR CONSULTING SERVICES

for over 50 years, Cross Insurance knows the value of a good partnership.

Managing Broker of the ASM/Acadia Insurance Program

401 EDGEWATER PLACE, SUITE 220,WAKEFIELD, MA 01880 OFFICIAL INSURANCE BROKER

781.914.1035 OFFICIAL SPONSOR

CROSSAGENCY.COM

THE PROFESSIONAL

A Publication of the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts, Inc.

cover story features

16 Seaport Boom a Boon to Subcontractors

04 PRESIDENT’S VIEW ASM Welcomes Susan Coghlin Mailman as President

14 ADVERTISING

Determining the Most Cost-Effective Advertising

for Your Business

05 CONTRACTS – RISK MANAGEMENT

ConsensusDocs 10-Year Milestone Marks a

Brighter Outlook for the A/E/C

20 CONSERVATION ‘Minor Activities’ for Major Building

Projects Across the Commonwealth

06 LEADERSHIP

Safety Leadership: The Missing Piece in

Foremen Training

22 MEDIATION Mediation and You

08 BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING It’s Not Your Father’s Coordination!

10 BIENNIAL GALA ASM Celebrates at Biennial

Dinner Gala & Elections 13 TRADESWOMEN Going Global with the Policy Group on

Tradeswomen’s Issues

24 PREFAB CONSTRUCTION

The Advantages of Prefabricated Construction 26 BUDDING DEVELOPMENTS Massachusetts’s Highest Court Extends

Handicap Discrimination Law Protections

to Medical Marijuana Users 28 HIGH RISE BUILDING The High Risks of Building High Rises 31 MEMBER NEWS 31 PROJECT PHOTO GALLERY

The Professional Contractor

3

PRESIDENT’S VIEW

BY SUSAN COGHLIN MAILMAN

ASM Welcomes Susan Coghlin Mailman as President

I

’m honored to be elected chair of the board of directors for the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts (ASM). To be able to represent the board that works for the interests of subcontracting firms across the commonwealth is really cool! I can tell you after nine years on the board that you are being represented by passionate, engaged individuals. It has been an honor to work with ASM’s past president Joe Bodio, CEO of LAN-TEL communications Inc., for the past two years. Joe really focused his presidency on the future of technology and how it will impact our businesses and our customers. He’s also given considerable thought as to how change will be around every corner and our ability to succeed as organizations will depend on our ability to be nimble. Joe has been incredibly active in our legislative work and I promise to follow in his footsteps. I’m excited to work with Carrie Ciliberto – ASM’s new CEO. I believe her background fits perfectly with our mission. She has big shoes to fill and I believe the fit is perfect!

Our industry is a story of workforce development. We represent entrepreneurs, like Joe Bodio, as well as fourth generation, family-owned businesses like my company, Coghlin Electrical Contractors Inc. We are the backbone of the construction industry – we provide the labor across trade after trade after trade. In total, we represent more than 350 organizations and thousands of employees across the commonwealth. Legislators care about

what we have to say. They should – we vote – and we represent a lot of working-class families.

If I had been asked to chair this board when I was 40, I might have been quiet about some of the things I will share at 55 (age brings more knowledge and maybe a bit of wisdom, too).

Our industry needs to diversify its workforce; we need to welcome women, and I mean REALLY welcome women – as respected colleagues in the field, that manage our projects on jobsites, that serve as estimators and CAD engineers and purchasing and accounting professionals, and as people that ultimately own and operate businesses.

We also need to embrace our diverse ethnic populations. Our state has stagnated in natural born citizens, yet our immigrant populations are growing. The success of our businesses will hinge on our ability to train and develop a diverse workforce. A nod to the Gaming Commission for their work in the state on behalf of women and people of color – they are impacting families’ lives through good-paying jobs. The entire industry will benefit because of efforts being made today.

Lastly, but very important to me, while we are fortunate to work all over the state, my company’s home has always been in Worcester. During my tenure, I hope ASM can increase membership from Central and Western MA and Cape Cod, and metro Boston, too, as the work that gets done at our organization truly represents all of us! s

Susan Coghlin Mailman is the president of Coghlin Electrical Contractors and Coghlin Network Services Inc., both in Worcester. She is also a past president of the Central Massachusetts Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association, and was the board chair at the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce. She can be reached through ASM at 617-742-3412 or by email at president@associatedsubs.com.

The Professional Contractor is published by Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts, Inc. 15 Court Sq., Suite 840 Boston MA 02108 tel 617-742-3412 | fax 857-453-4338 mail@associatedsubs.com | www.associatedsubs.com

ASM Officers

President: Susan Coghlin Mailman, Coghlin Electrical Contractors and Coghlin Network Services Inc. President-Elect: Peter J. Gormley, New England Waterproofing Inc. Vice President & Assistant Treasurer: Steven T. Amanti, E. Amanti & Sons Inc. Vice President: Dana E. Johnston Jr., Fall River Electrical Associates Treasurer: Russell J. Anderson, Southeastern Metal Fabricators, Inc. Past President: Joseph H. Bodio, LAN-TEL Communications Inc

4

Winter 2017

ASM Directors

Matthew A. Brown | Christopher M. Buell | David G. Cannistraro | Leslie M. Carrio | R. Lindsay Drisko | Lawrence F. Eagan | Richard R. Fisher | Roger A. Fuller | Wayne J. Griffin | William J. (Mac) Lynch | Jacquelyn A. Magill | Jeffrey T. Marr Jr | Erik S. Maseng | Michael R. McNulty Sr. | James B. Miller | Bernard K. Quinlan | Frank J. Smith | Peter R. Townsend David E. Wilson & John M. Curran, Executive Secretary Carrie L. Ciliberto, CEO

The Warren Group Design / Production / Advertising www.thewarrengroup.com custompubs@thewarrengroup.com

©2017 The Warren Group, Inc. and Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts, Inc All rights reserved. The Warren Group is a trademark of The Warren Group Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

CONTRACTS – RISK MANAGEMENT BY BRIAN PERLBERG, ESQ.

ConsensusDocs 10-Year Milestone Marks a Brighter Outlook for the A/E/C

C

onsensusDocs is a unique coalition to publish best practice standard construction contracts. On Sept. 27 ConsensusDocs hit a 10-year milestone. The ConsensusDocs coalition is a first of its kind industry-wide effort to bring the A/E/C industry together to create standard construction contracts that create a better contractual foundation to build successfully. The original mission and current mission continues to be to optimize better project results with less transactional costs – namely claims, contingencies, litigation and contentious contract negotiations.

Unfortunately, shortly after accomplishing the release of ConsensusDocs, the construction industry hit not just a recession, but a depression. Consequently, getting the industry to move to better and fairer contracts when less contracts are being signed was challenging but not insurmountable. Now with a healthy construction economy, the good news is that the number of users subscribing to the documents is not only growing, but accelerating.

Now there is a 10-year track record of success for projects utilizing ConsensusDocs contracts. These projects experience fewer claims and litigation than other standard contract documents. The key was getting away from the traditional perspective of a particular segment of the industry: writing the contract to get all the players’ perspectives to better align all parties in order to reach project completion successfully. And contracts that are one-offs written by one party’s perspective to benefit only itself ultimately doesn’t work well either. Project histories using ConsensusDocs contracts help demonstrate that there really is a better way to build. This contrasts

an approach that creates contractual silos that attempt to legitimize itself from reams of reported court cases that keep getting longer.

The ConsensusDocs Coalition’s goal is to improve the design and construction industry with best-practice contracts that are fair to all parties. Here are some of the highlights: •• Launched in 2007 •• 10 years of existence •• 40 leading construction associations participating in the coalition •• Over 100 standard contract documents •• Covering all four major project delivery methods •• Over, 2,500 subscribers •• Over 4,000 registrants on the ConsensusDocs Technology Platform (launched in 2012) •• Over a million dollars in donated free educational licenses value •• 1,000s of successfully-completed projects with an estimated value of construction put in place of billions of dollars •• Two comprehensive updates and seven industry-first standard contract documents (such as IPD and BIM) The milestones demonstrate a better path forward. ConsensusDocs offers a fundamental contractual difference that enables an owner of a construction project to be more active in construction decisions. At the end of the day, an owner has the most to gain or lose in a project’s success, so their default role for everything should not just be as a checkpayer. Moreover, contract documents should be written clearly to be understood and facilitated contract administration, not to obfuscate and litigate. Direct party communications can help reduce and mitigate claims,

rather than create contractual silos.

And fairer contracts produce better results.

One of the most difficult obstacles to effectuate change is to demonstrate a proven track record of success in traditionally slowmoving industries that are reluctant to change. Construction and legal contract drafting both fit into that category. However, there are three compelling reasons to change.

The first is that our current system of moving contractual risk to the lowest and often weakest party in the contractual change has been proven to be broken and therefore needs to be fixed. The best studies on the subject, including one from Construction Industry Institute, conclude that unfair contract provisions raise prices and get poor project results.

Secondly, even if our traditional contract standards were working well, that doesn’t mean your competition isn’t going to disrupt the current way of doing business and replace it with a more efficient way. Cleary, the industry is starting to change. Even if IPD is not the dominate project delivery method, most construction companies are trying to incorporate lean principles into their construction processes; your contracts need to keep up with business processes. continued on page 23 The Professional Contractor

5

LEADERSHIP

BY LINDA GOLDENHAR AND JAMIE TESSLER

Safety Leadership: The Missing Piece in Foremen Training

M

any foremen in Massachusetts have received the OSHA30 training program which covers a wide range of construction related safety and health hazards. But there is one important topic that is missing from this program: how to be an effective safety leader. A national team looking at safety leadership training found that there were a shortage of needed programs. In addition, the research suggests that positive and effective safety leadership can improve safety climate on the job. “Safety climate” can be defined as the perception of workers of how well safety policies, procedures, and practices are actually implemented on the jobsite. Research shows us that safety climate is a key indicator of injury outcomes. Foremen and lead workers are the linchpins to creating a strong jobsite safety climate by being effective jobsite safety leaders.

To help address the gap, CPWR – The Center for Construction Research and Training, with funding from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) developed The Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL), a two-and-a-half hour safety leadership training module designed to teach five critical safety leadership skills – and how to apply them on the job – to foreman and lead workers.

Two key drivers led CPWR to recognize the need for such training. The first was uncovered at a 2013 CPWR-NIOSH workshop where 70 construction stakeholders worked together to identify eight key leading indicators of a strong jobsite safety climate, the first being site supervisor safety leadership. The second came from a 2012 McGraw Hill – CPWR survey showing that many construction companies, regardless of size, require their new foremen to take the OSHA 30-hour course to learn leadership skills. Noting the absence of people skills, such as leadership, in the OSHA 30-hour course, the FSL was designed to become an official OSHA30 elective. After being positively received by the construction community and OSHA, the FSL became an official OSHA30 elective on Jan. 1.

The FSL is the result of a rigorous development process. For 18 months, beginning in September 2014, CPWR, with a university research team, worked closely with a 17-member curriculum development team (CDT) of OSHA 10- and 30-hour outreach trainers, construction workers, safety and health professionals from small and large companies, representatives of building trade unions, consultants and OSHA staff. This broad group was assembled to assure that the final leadership module would meet the needs of foremen as well as those who would conduct the training.

The final module contains foundational material plus seven real-world animated scenarios. The five critical safety leadership skills are: Since its completion, the FSL has been conducted throughout the United States through select general contractors, construction companies, OSHA30 trainers and universities.

The likely benefits of having your foremen and lead workers participate in the FSL training include:

Leads by example

•• Establishes safety expectations as a core value •• Shares safety vision with team members •• Demonstrates a positive attitude about safety •• “Walk the talk”

Engages and empowers team members

•• Engages, encourages, and empowers crew members to identify and act upon unsafe situations by: oo Reporting hazards and safety concerns oo Providing solutions oo Reporting near misses oo Stopping work if necessary

Actively listens and practices three-way communication Develops team members through teaching, coaching and feedback

•• Actively listens to hear what team members are saying •• Practices three-way communication by having person repeat the message they heard

Recognizes team members for a job well done

•• Privately and/or publicly acknowledges team members for going above and beyond for safety

6

Winter 2017

•• Respectfully teaches and coaches workers •• Watches the learner fix the hazardous situation or perform the task to make sure it’s done correctly •• Focuses on potential consequences rather than on the team member •• Uses the FIST principle: Facts, Impact, Suggestions, Timely

•• Positive safety climate •• Reduced hazards and injuries •• Increased morale and sense of teamwork •• More productive due to better communication In addition, a research team in three states is evaluating the effectiveness of the FSL. Here in the Greater Boston area, three training programs were conducted and evaluated by Northeastern University with area subcontractors. Nationally, the FSL training was evaluated with 20 different subcontractors. Surveys were administered before and after the training to ascertain the degree to which the training program influenced the foremen’s use of the five leadership skills. Workers reporting to the foremen who were trained were also asked, in surveys, about any changes they perceived in the worksite safety climate and their foremen’s leadership practices. Data analysis is commencing this fall, with preliminary results pointing to an increase in use of leadership skills four weeks following the training program.

One contractor, a company president who incorporated the FSL into his safety program, had this to say: “I think the crew is more willing to bring up items to the foreman … I know that we have had guys bring stuff up that matters, and we’ve actually made changes on site or brought it to the attention of people who can make changes because of what our guys are bringing up.”

One FSL-trained foreman said: “The biggest thing I took out of the training – and it’s something that I’ve always done but never took it as seriously as I do now – is that three-way communicating. Instead of just giving somebody some information, sending them off blindly to do the job, and then getting mad because they didn’t do it right, they can explain to you exactly what you said to them and if they didn’t get it the first time, you can talk about it, have an opportunity to get it right. And it also makes them feel like they’re part of the planning.”

The FSL is available to everyone; there is no cost to downloading all of the teaching materials including PowerPoint presentations, animated videos, instructor guides and student materials from CPWR1. As an official OSHA30 elective, you can request that the firm providing training to your foremen includes the FSL as one of the elective modules. The FSL can also be taught as a free-standing training module as part of your ongoing safety training initiatives, as it meets the construction industry’s request for more leadership training for foreman and other supervisors. For additional information about the training module you can contact Dr. Linda M. Goldenhar at lgoldenhar@cpwr.com.

Northeastern University is actively engaged in a variety of projects of interest to construction companies, including the following: Building Safety for Everyone: Building Safety for Everyone is a worksite-based program that utilizes predictive solutions to recognize safe physical working conditions and practices from safety assessments and provide feedback to workers. It is an innovative safety recognition and communication program that works to positively influence on–site safety culture by facilitating teamwork and

collaborative competition.2 All the Right Moves (in partnership with Harvard’s Center for Worker Health and Well-Being) Our goal is to improve the safety, health and well-being of construction workers through the application of integrated policies, programs and practices that foster a safe and healthy work organization and environment within the context of the construction industry’s multi-organizational structure.3 To find out more about other construction 1health and safety projects at Northeastern University’s Occupational Biomechanics and Ergonomics Laboratory4 under the direction of Dr. Jack Dennerlein, please contact Jamie Tessler (j.tessler@northeastern.edu), Hao Trieu (h.trieu@ northeastern.edu) or Dan Weinstein (d.weinstein@northeastern.edu). s

Footnotes: 1. https://www.cpwr.com/foundations-safety-leadershipfsl 2. https://www.northeastern.edu/ buildingsafetyforeveryone/ 3. http://centerforworkhealth.sph.harvard.edu/node/84 4. https://www.northeastern.edu/ehs/about/contact-us/

Dr. Linda M. Goldenhar is the director of research and evaluation at The Center for Construction Research and Training in Silver Spring, Maryland. She can be reached at 301-495-8540 or at lgoldenhar@cpwr.com.

Jamie Tessler is a research project manager at Northeastern University’s Occupational Biomechanics and Ergonomics Laboratory. She can be reached at 617-373-4896 or at j.tessler@northeastern.edu.

The Professional Contractor

7

BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING

BY JESSE CONNOLLY

It’s Not Your Father’s Coordination!

N

o matter what field you ply your trade in, at some point in time, you’ve heard a colleague enthusiastically declare that “teamwork makes the dream work.”

While oft-overused, the phrase is perhaps never more applicable than when it comes to Building Information Management, commonly known as BIM. What exactly – in the textbook sense – is BIM? “Building Information Modeling is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility,” writes the National Institute of Building Sciences. “A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition.”

Put simply, BIM software is a tool designed to map out every facet of a construction project, with sometimes countless contributors helping it take shape.

“What’s BIM to me? In its most basic form, it’s really just building an exact digital model of your project, and filling it with as much applicable information as possible, pre-construction,” said Ryan Walsh of John Moriarty and Associates (JMA). “There’s a balance, though. Too much non-pertinent information proves to be a hindrance.”

At JMA – whose reach spans from the

company’s headquarters in Winchester, Mass., and throughout New England, all the way down the East Coast to their offices in Hollywood, FL. – Walsh must be quick to identify concise, precise models to maximize efficiency as an MEP superintendent/BIM manager.

“I receive so many BIM models that can’t be used for construction or fabrication,” said Walsh. “Frankly, I’d rather scrap them and start from scratch. If I’m going to model something, it’s going to be exactly what’s being used on the job – otherwise, I’m wasting my time. If I can make it adaptive to be used for future projects, there’s more time saved. I’m not modeling for marketing.”

Going back to when he first cut his teeth in the field as a teenager working for John McShane – a family friend who saw something in him and kick-started his passion for construction – at McShane Construction on Cape Cod, Walsh has quite literally gone from building things by hand to harnessing the powers of technology unforeseen during the now37-year-old’s formative years.

That technology has transformed dramatically even in the past decade-plus since Walsh returned to the industry after working in finance and studying graphic design in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“When I did return, hand-drafting was still prevalent and 2D AutoCAD coordination was on the cusp of breaking

through,” said Walsh, whose studies included business management at Bridgewater State. “I still remember overlaying coordination drawings on the light table with everyone huddled around to solve problems.

“That was back when people still smoked in the trailers, and RFIs were hand-delivered to the design team! It wasn’t until the mid-2000s when I really started getting into 3D modeling, using software like AutoCAD 3D, Revit (preAutodesk, Charles River Software), and JetStream – now known as Navisworks.”

The evolution of tools at the industry’s fingertips can often leave many longing for the approach of yesteryear, but Walsh knows it’s for the greater good.

“It was simpler (back then), but we spent a lot more time and made more mistakes,” he said. “I believe in the technology. I believe in only what I feel will make us the most efficient and productive company we can be. If there’s real world value and metrics supporting it, we’ll embrace it. We’re going paperless on a lot of our jobs now. What’s most satisfying for me is watching different generations utilize the technology to deliver the best product possible.”

Once bogged down by a bevy of inperson meetings, snail mail and ream after ream of printouts, the collaborative process has become an instantaneous one.

Jesse Connolly is an information technology technical specialist for Network Coverage, a provider of innovative IT solutions whose primary clients include subcontractors, general contractors and construction management firms. He can be reached at 978-739-8060 or at jconnolly@netcov.com.

More information on Network Coverage’s solutions can be found at www.netcov.com.

8

Winter 2017

“Now, virtually everything can be communicated without leaving my office,” said Walsh. “Critical information is also sent instantaneously. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not on several virtual meetings, sharing models and other design documents. An RFI that used to take me a week to get approved may take a few hours now. The same day, I have the revisions made in model on the cloud and synced with the iPads being used in the field for construction.”

A literal load-lightening has also taken place when it comes to the physical tools of the trade.

“Starting with the hardware, we recently invested in custom-made Microsoft Surface Hubs. This was a joint effort with our IT group, Network Coverage,” Walsh said. “We needed a platform that could host all of a project’s documents, models, etc., with touch-screen capability. We also wanted integrated cameras, speakers and microphones for presentations and meetings. The machines also have passwordprotected network access for job-to-job collaboration. In lieu of plan tables now, we have Surface Hubs.”

Increasingly, companies like John Moriarty and Associates are relying on the cloud to house their work.

“I’m on a huge BIM 360 kick. You’re welcome, AutoDesk,” Walsh quipped.

“Seriously, though, I think AutoDesk has been able to take years of client feedback and develop a product that truly enhances collaboration. Having personally been through the evolution of coordination, it’s refreshing to have your voice heard in software developments.

“We’re transitioning a majority of our projects over to 360. I’m actively involved in training our staff and subcontractors on the software because I see the value from my own experience.

I won’t promote any software until I’ve spent countless hours with it, proving its worth. Having one composite model, available at anytime, anywhere for an entire construction team is invaluable.”

Walsh said quantifying just how much time and labor’s saved thanks to things like cloud collaboration is a tall task, but seeing a model seamlessly translate to a tangible building is crucial.

“Everyone’s heard ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ A correctly-executed BIM model is worth a billion.”

The evolution of BIM has taken the art of teamwork to new heights. We all know what follows suit. s

The Professional Contractor

9

BIENNIAL GALA

ASM Celebrates at Biennial Dinner Gala & Elections

O

ver 250 ASM members and guests enjoyed a wonderful evening at the Westin Copley Place in Boston on Nov. 9 for the 2017 ASM Biennial Dinner Gala & Elections. During a very busy time for the state’s subcontractors and the entire construction industry, it was a rare opportunity to relax, reconnect with industry colleagues, and celebrate!

It was also an occasion to reflect on ASM’s recent successes, and express appreciation for the efforts of Rep. Thomas A. Golden Jr., who was on hand to receive ASM’s Outstanding Legislator Award for his support of ASM’s indemnity legislation.

The event also marked the changing of the guard at ASM, with the election of ASM’s new President Susan Coghlin Mailman, along with a new team of officers and directors (see complete roster on facing page). It also featured the presentation of ASM’s prestigious Joseph M. Corwin Pinnacle Award to Monica Lawton, ASM’s former CEO, and recognition of 17 organizations newly added to ASM’s distinguished Quarter Century Honor Roll for being members of ASM for more than 25 years.

We invite you to re-live this special evening through the photos and articles on these pages.

10

Winter 2017

Introducing ASM’s Newly Elected Officers and Directors Serving through 2019

OFFICERS PRESIDENT Susan Coghlin Mailman Coghlin Electrical Contractors and Coghlin Network Services Inc. PRESIDENT-ELECT Peter J. Gormley New England Waterproofing Inc.

VICE PRESIDENT Dana E. Johnston Jr. Fall River Electrical Associates TREASURER Russell J. Anderson Southeastern Metal Fabricators Inc. PAST PRESIDENT Joseph H. Bodio LAN-TEL Communications Inc.

VICE PRESIDENT & ASSISTANT TREASURER Steven T. Amanti E. Amanti & Sons Inc.

DIRECTORS Matthew A. Brown Greenwood Industries Inc. Christopher M. Buell Wright Architectural Millwork Corp.

David G. Cannistraro J.C. Cannistraro LLC Leslie Carrio DePaoli Mosaic Company R. Lindsay Drisko ENE Systems Inc.

Meet ASM’s new President, Susan Coghlin Mailman!

Susan Coghlin Mailman of Coghlin Electrical Contractors Inc. took the helm as president of ASM, succeeding Joseph H. Bodio of LAN-TEL Communications Inc.

Lawrence F. Eagan Collins Electric Company Richard R. Fisher Red Wing Construction Roger A. Fuller R & R Window Contractors Inc. Wayne J. Griffin Wayne J. Griffin Electric Inc.

William J. (Mac) Lynch William F. Lynch Co. Inc. Jacquelyn A. Magill EDM Construction Jeffrey T. Marr Jr. Marr Scaffolding Company Erik S. Maseng Viking Controls Inc. Michael R. McNulty Sr. Millwork One James B. Miller Salem Glass Company Bernard K. Quinlan The Sullivan Group Frank J. Smith Eastern Insurance Group LLC Construction Division Peter Townsend M.L. McDonald Sales Company LLC

2017 QUARTER CENTURY AWARDS Congratulations to the following members, who recently reached the 25-year milestone as members of ASM and have earned a place on ASM’s distinguished “Quarter Century Honor Roll.”

In addition to serving on ASM’s board of directors since 2008, Mailman is a past president of the Central Massachusetts Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), and was previously the board chair at the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce. She brings decades of construction industry experience to the position, and has helped guide major institutions in greater Worcester.

She considers workforce development, workforce diversification and a more consistent presence in Central Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts and Cape Cod among her top priorities as president. continued on page 12

Coghlin Electrical Contractors Inc. & Coghlin Network Services DeSanctis Insurance Agency Inc. Eastern Insurance Group LLC Construction Division ENE Systems Inc. Hub Glass Services Inc. Lynnwell Associates Inc. M.L. McDonald Sales Company LLC New England Mechanical Contractors Association NECA - Central Mass. Chapter New England Decks & Floors Inc. New Hampshire Steel Fabricators LLC Robert W. Irvine and Sons Inc. Ryan Iron Works Inc. Sparks Company Inc. T.J. McCartney Inc. Titan Roofing Inc. Viking Controls Inc.

The Professional Contractor

11

Biennial Dinner Gala continued from 11 “I am truly honored to be President of ASM, as our industry is loaded with hard-working, no-nonsense business people,” said Mailman. “Our association currently represents over 300 organizations and thousands of employees, including entrepreneurs, generational tradespeople and recent immigrants. To me, it’s a like a microcosm of our commonwealth, and it’s my pleasure to serve this association for the next two years.”

She is joined by a new team of officers that includes president-elect Peter J. Gormley of New England Waterproofing Inc.; vice president and assistant treasurer Steven T. Amanti of E. Amanti & Sons Inc.; vice president Dana E. Johnston Jr. of Fall River Electrical Associates; treasurer Russell J. Anderson of Southeastern Metal Fabricators Inc.; and past president Joseph H. Bodio of LAN-TEL Communications Inc.

Steering, Policy and Scheduling. Perhaps most important to ASM members is that Golden is the sponsor of ASM’s indemnity bill, written to prevent unfair risk transfer to subcontractors.

In his remarks at the event, Golden reminisced about his father’s involvement in the construction industry, and the importance of fairness for all companies involved in public and private construction projects around the state. He also gave high praise to ASM’s work on Beacon Hill, emphasizing how the association has earned great respect among legislators for its integrity and hard work. The packed house at the Westin Copley Place gave Golden a well-deserved, standing ovation in appreciation of his support of ASM’s indemnity bill and the state’s subcontractors.

ASM Presents Joseph M. Corwin Pinnacle Award

ASM Presents Outstanding Legislator Award

Monica Lawton received ASM’s prestigious Joseph M. Corwin Pinnacle Award, which recognizes outstanding dedication, leadership and service to ASM and the subcontract-

Golden is the state representative for the 16th Middlesex District, which includes Lowell and Chelmsford. He is chair of the state’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, which oversees the development of energy sources, including the siting of energy facilities, public utilities, wind farms and more. Additionally, he currently serves as vice chair of Election Laws and is a committee member on Community Development and Small Business, as well as

ing industry. As the recently-retired CEO of ASM, Lawton was a driving force behind several of ASM’s signature legislative victories on behalf of subcontractors, including the 2004 CM at Risk legislation; the 2010 Prompt Pay Law; and the 2014 Retainage Law. During her 20-year tenure, she epitomized the spirit of ASM’s founding father, Joseph M. Corwin Esq., who served as counsel to ASM for more than 40 years, and in whose memory the award is named. Lawton earned this distinguished award through hard work, persistence and an unrelenting desire for fairness in the construction industry. ASM was proud to honor and thank her for her years of service. s

ASM was proud to honor Rep. Thomas A. Golden Jr. with the Outstanding Legislator Award in recognition of his support of the state’s construction industry and subcontracting community.

A Very Special Thank You to the Gala Sponsors!

Platinum Sponsors

• Acadia Insurance • Coghlin Electrical Contractors & Coghlin Network Services Inc. • Corwin & Corwin LLP • Cross Insurance • E. Amanti & Sons Inc. • Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP • LAN-TEL Communications Inc. • Marr Companies • Wayne J. Griffin Electric Inc.

12

Winter 2017

Gold Sponsors

• J.C. Cannistraro LLC • The Cheviot Corporation • Eastern Insurance Group LLC Construction Division • Marsh & McLennan Agency • R & R Window Contractors Inc. • Salem Glass Company • Sullivan Group • Travelers Insurance • Zurich North America

Silver Sponsors • • • • • • • • •

DePaoli Mosaic Company Dimeo Construction Company ENE Systems Inc. Fall River Electrical Associates Greenwood Industries Inc. J.F. Shine Mechanical Inc. Lockheed Window Corp.

M.L. McDonald Sales Company Inc. National Electrical Contractors Association – Greater Boston Chapter

• • • • •

Rucci, Bardaro & Falzone PC Victaulic Viking Controls Inc. William F. Lynch Company Inc. Wright Architectural Millwork

Bronze Sponsors

• Collins Electric Company • New Hampshire Steel Fabricators LLC • NorthStar Insurance Services

TRADESWOMEN

BY SUSAN MOIR

Going Global with the Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues

T

he Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues (PGTI) is a regional collaboration of construction industry stakeholders, including tradeswomen, building trades unions, contractors, government representatives, community organizations and researchers. Co-convened by the UMass Boston Labor Resource Center, the Metropolitan Boston Building Trades Council, the New England Regional Council of Carpenters and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, PGTI seeks to create and maintain good opportunities and jobs in the construction trades for women.

Recently, a delegation from PGTI, including Susan Moir and fifteen tradeswomen from around the country, visited India as part of a multinational effort to raise awareness of the opportunities for women in the global construction industry. The following is a first-person account of their experiences with their counterparts from India at the recent Women Build Nations conference in Chicago.

The first delegation of U.S. Tradeswomen to India has been very busy. Right after we returned from India in January 2017, members of the delegation put together a committee to bring a delegation from India to Women Build Nations, the national tradeswomen’s conference held in Chicago in October. It was a long process and we had hoped to bring four guests – two women construction workers and two advocates. After many attempts, the construction workers were unable to get visas from the U.S. government. We provided lots of documentation that stated the women would be coming to attend the conference and would be returning home afterward. We even got Missouri State Senator Gina Walsh, herself a retired tradeswoman, involved. But we were unsuccessful in our efforts to bring two female Indian construction workers to the conference. We will try again in the future.

We were able to bring two guests: Vrishali Pipati, director of Mumbai Mobile Creches in Mumbai, and Thresiamma Mathew, Director of the Archana Women’s Centre (Archana) in Kerala.

Mumbai Mobile Creches is one several organizations across India that have been setting up childcare centers on construction sites for the children of migrant construction workers for almost 50 years. Archana has been training women in the masonry and carpentry trades for 30 years. The centre itself was built entirely by women.

Before the conference, our guests spent time in St. Louis, hosted by carpenter Beth Barton and Missouri Women in the Trades, a trade group dedicated to expanding opportunities for women in construction in the St. Louis area. They visited the bricklayers local 1 apprentice training center and the carpenters training center, toured a Tarlton Construction Co. worksite at Washington University, attended a reception in their honor and saw a bit of St. Louis.

On Thursday, the tradeswomen of St. Louis and our guests from India jumped in a van for the six-hour drive to Chicago to spend the weekend with 1,800 tradeswomen at the Women Build Nations conference.

The tradeswomen of Building Bridges organized two workshops at the conference: one on their 16-day trip to India last January and on future ideas for tradeswomen returning to India; and the second on building global networks for women working in construction. The global workshop included women from India, Canada and Ireland, and featured reports on tradeswomen organizing in Australia and the Philippines. There was a lot of interest among many women in being part of future delegations of rank-and-file tradeswomen, and in building networks with women working in construction around the world.

In the final session of the conference, the Building Bridges Delegation joined Thresiamma and Vrishali, our two guests from India, on stage as they addressed the participants in the plenary session.

Operating engineers Kelly McClellen and Holly Brown played final hosts in Chicago after the conference with a visit to the operating engineers’ enormous indoor training center, and finally a bit of tourist time. We hope to have our sister tradeswomen – and even more international representatives – attend the next Women Build Nations conference when it happens in Seattle in 2018. s Susan Moir is the director of research at UMassBoston’s Labor Resource Center, and is a co-founder of the Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues. She can be reached at susan.moir@umb.edu.

The Professional Contractor

13

ADVERTISING

BY RYAN GRIEVE

Determining the Most Cost-Effective Advertising for Your Business

Establish Your Primary Goal Are you looking to increase your overall brand exposure or are you trying to connect with more potential customers who need your services right now? For most small to medium sized companies it’s typically more valuable to focus on advertising that can generate immediate results.

Branding requires a larger investment of time and money to be effective. Strategies that work for giant corporations like Apple or Coke are due to their very large financial commitment to advertising. For most small to medium sized businesses It makes more sense to allocate the majority of your budget towards acquiring potential customers who are looking for your services right now and the remainder to general branding.

Tracking Your Results The advertising sources that offer the best tracking are typically digital mediums, because the source of the leads can be accurately tracked with web analytics. Asking people how they heard of you is a good practice, but it isn’t very reliable.

We’ve tested this method by adding a question to some of our client’s contact forms and determined that most people just select a random choice, to complete the form.

Ryan Grieve is the founder and owner of Growth Steps (www.growthsteps.com), a digital marketing company that specializes in working with service-based businesses. He can be reached at 339-368-8555 or at ryan@growthsteps.com.

14

Winter 2017

Focus on advertising mediums that are fully quantifiable first. If you advertise in print, be sure the contact number you list is a call tracking number so you can monitor how many calls you receive directly from the ads.

Bonus tips: Google Analytics is a free software that will show you which advertising mediums are providing the most sales along with other valuable information about who is visiting your website. CallRail is a paid call tracking software that can be implemented to record calls and track the advertising sources generating calls to your business. When CallRail is integrated with Google Analytics you can see your calls and form fills all in one interface.

Determine Your Advertising Winners and Losers Before branching out to new advertising mediums you should always measure the results you are receiving from your current advertising mediums. Here is how to determine your current results and what steps to take next.

Determine your baseline for each medium: Review each of your current advertising channels to determine their ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). The simplest way to factor this is to divide the total revenue for each medium, by the total amount invested in that medium. For example, if you invested $10,000 in a year and received $100,000 in revenue, you have a 10:1 ratio of advertising investment to revenue.

Focus on the winners: When there is a large variance in returns across different advertising mediums, consider eliminating the mediums with lower ROAS and investing more into the medium producing the highest ROAS. Continue increasing your budget for this top performer, until you are receiving the maximum number of leads from that medium. Repeat this same process for the advertising mediums that are second, third etc.

Reallocate your investment: If your current advertising channels are maxing out your monthly budget reallocate some of your budget from the medium(s) with the lowest ROAS and test a new advertising medium. By optimizing your existing advertising mediums, you can then

create additional room in your budget for a new medium that may offer a lower ROAS, and still be profitable.

This is a topic for another article, but here is an in-depth article on customer acquisition costs: https:// blog.kissmetrics.com/customer-acquisition-cost.

Eliminate the losers: If the new advertising medium outperforms your least performing medium consider eliminating that advertising source or reducing your budget.

Bonus tip: be patient. The results you receive in the first month or two of testing a new advertising medium may not be representative of your results after six months. Ask the company you are considering advertising with how long it usually takes to ramp up the campaign.

Balance Your Risk Some advertising channels could produce no results at all. Here are a few things to consider when determining your potential risk: •• Can the company provide you with references in the same

industry and geography that are experiencing success?

•• Is there a contract and if so what is the length of that contract?

•• How long does it typically take to start generating results?

•• Determine the actual total costs.

that give you a competitive advantage.

Choose mediums that the performance results are determined by the skill of the person managing it, rather than mediums where all advertisers receive the same results. This will require finding experienced partners to help you achieve the best results.

Maximize each channel before branching out further to get the most from your investment. Most digital advertising channels require management to work effectively, so there is typically a charge for the advertising plus the management. s

Bonus tips: Focus on the advertising channels that are producing the best results for you currently. Explore new ways to continue to optimize those channels, before adding new advertising mediums.

Focus on advertising mediums

The ONE place construction professionals find everything they need.

The right locations.

The right products.

The right expertise. ….Right in your backyard.

Visit us at…

79 Clapp Street Dorchester, MA 01821 617-825-3230

We are ALSO open 24 hours a day at: Airgas.com

Airgas is your ONE SOURCE for the gases, equipment, and safety supplies you will need.               

Industrial Gases Safety Supplies MRO Supplies Plasma Cutting Equip.

Tools & Hardware Welding Products Fall Protection Equip.

Propane Filler Metals Gas Equipment Eye & Face Protection Hearing Protection Abrasives Respiratory Protection AND much more...

The Professional Contractor

15

SEAPORT BOOM A BOON TO SUBCONTRACTORS American Plumbing & Heating worked on the high-end condos in the towers at 22 Liberty and 50 Liberty.

16

Winter 2017

T

he construction boom transforming Boston’s Seaport and neighboring Fort Point neighborhoods is proving to be a windfall for subcontractors.

Hundreds of subs and tens of thousands of construction workers have labored on the new high-rises and renovated warehouses on Boston’s booming waterfront over the past few decades.

And that is especially true for subs like American Plumbing & Heating Corp., which can handle complicated and demanding work on luxury condominiums and state-of-the-art laboratories.

American Plumbing & Heating this summer started work on a new project, a $200 million luxury apartment tower at 399 Congress St. in the Seaport near Fort Point.

The Norwell-based firm helped build out some of the Seaport’s most prominent towers and project, ranging from multimillion condos and hip restaurants to biotech and office space.

The subcontractor, which has a payroll of 290, often has three dozen or more employees at any one time working on projects in the Seaport.

“The waterfront has been incredible,” said Dan Bent, executive vice president of American Plumbing & Heating. “It is just really exciting to be part of the area which is changing the whole landscape of Boston.”

Said Drew Thiel, the company’s director of business development: “It is changing the whole skyline – you seen nothing but tower cranes when you’re driving on 93.”

The company credits part of its success in winning bids on big projects in the Seaport and Fort Point to getting in on the action early.

“Maintaining high quality standards and a cooperative spirit allows us to turn over a quality project to a satisfied customer. That philosophy results in repeat business,” said Pat O’Toole, vice president of plumbing and project manager on several projects of the Seaport projects.

The Norwell subcontractor got hired to help build out Vertex’s new headquarters at Fan Pier.

The 17-story high-rise, which opened in 2014 and played a key role in spurring new development in the Seaport, has 775,000 square feet of lab and office space.

Bent says American Plumbing & Heating is particularly proud of its work on the Vertex project and, in particular, on the five floors of lab space it helped fit out for the biotech company at its Fan Pier headquarters.

That involved installing as many as 20 to 30 separate lines for all sorts of specialty gases used in research.

“We have definitely developed a niche in the biotech market,” Bent said. “You are definitely limiting the competition. There is not a lot of people who can do what we do.” continued on page 18

The Professional Contractor

17

Seaport Boom a Boon to Subcontractors continued from 17 Rendering courtesy of Crescent Heights

American Plumbing & Heating Corp. this summer began work on 399 Congress St., a $200 million luxury apartment tower.

The Norwell-based subcontractor has also worked on Fan Pier two’s big luxury condo towers, 22 Liberty and 50 Liberty.

Work on condos that retail for multiple millions of dollars can be just as demanding, just in a different

way. Often the buyers of these deluxe condos pick out the bathroom fittings themselves, requiring a high degree of custom work.

A bathroom in a top waterfront unit can involve 10 to 20 times more detail work, with the highest degree of

finishes, including now-popular black faucets, Bent said.

Just setting the grout line – which is done with lasers – can be a project in and of itself.

“Someone is paying that kind of money for a high-end condo, they want it to look perfect,” Bent said.

Another popular item in the most expensive luxury condos are large marble soaking tubs, which can weigh hundreds of pounds and can require half a dozen workers to drop into place.

Joe Clancy, president of American Plumbing & Heating, made a decision to develop a 43,000-square-foot prefab shop at its headquarters in Norwell, which has been a big factor in its ability to successfully compete for work in the Seaport and Fort Point, said Thiel.

“We try to prefab as much of the piping offsite and deliver it on-site,” Thiel said.

The sub’s prefab shop has enabled it to continue working yearround in a temperature-controlled environment. Once various sections of

Proactive problem solvers

MA Lic A8999

CT Lic ELC.0123697-E1

Corporate Headquarters: 116 Hopping Brook Road Holliston, MA 01746 (508) 429-8830 Regional Offices: Charlotte, NC Durham, NC Duluth, GA

www.waynejgriffinelectric.com 18

Winter 2017

Pelham, AL

Photo courtesy of American Plumbing & Heating

Above, some of American Plumbing & Heating Corp.’s prefab work; a domestic hot water master mixing valve and recirculation pump station that was installed in the penthouse of Building C at the Seaport Square (now the Via hotel).

piping are done, American Plumbing & Heating loads them up into trucks and takes them to the job sites to be installed.

“We used to build it piece by piece on the job site,” Bent noted. “This is faster and cheaper.” With the help of 3D CAD design, “it drops in like a glove.”

The company is particularly proud of its contribution to five floors of lab space in Vertex’s new headquarters in the Seaport.

The ability to deliver sections ready to go has meant work that used to take two years can now be done in six months.

“If you don’t do prefab today you won’t be in business in any of these high-rise jobs,” Bent said. “It’s staggering when you look at the number of plumbing fixtures you put in.” s

Scott Van Voorhis is a freelance journalist and columnist with a focus on residential and commercial real estate. He can be reached at editorial@ thewarrengroup.com.

WE KNOW THERE’S MORE ON YOUR MIND THAN THE SAFETY OF A BUILDING ALONE.

As a contractor, you know there is risk around every corner. You need an insurance company that understands that. Not just from an insurer’s perspective, but from yours. Acadia Insurance. We’re closer to your business. And to you. With specialists in Massachusetts ready to serve you 24/7. Visit acadiainsurance.com or contact your local independent agent for more information about the ASM Safety Group and Dividend potential. Closer coverage.

290 Donald J. Lynch Blvd Marlborough, MA 01752, 1-888-665-1170 Products and services are provided by one or more insurance company subsidiaries of W. R. Berkley Corporation. Not all products and services are available in every jurisdiction, and the precise coverage afforded by any insurer is subject to applicable underwriting guidelines and the actual terms and conditions of the policies as issued.

ACAD-0279 Construction7.25x4.75R2.indd 1

3/16/15 4:10 PM

The Professional Contractor

19

CONSERVATION BY DAVID GORDEN

‘Minor Activities’ for Major Building Projects Across the Commonwealth

W

ith ASM’s 350 subcontractors, as well as suppliers and affiliated organizations in Massachusetts and surrounding states, I wonder if your major building construction project has ever been subject to the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act (WPA) (310 CMR 10.00)?

It’s important to know that areas subject to protection (regulated areas) under the WPA include any bank, freshwater wetland, coastal wetland, beach, dune, flat, marsh, or swamp – bordering on an ocean, estuary, creek, river, stream, pond or lake; land under any of the water bodies above; land subject to tidal action; land subject to coastal storm flowage; land subject to flooding; and riverfront area.

Did you know that minor activities, as described in the WPA within the buffer zone and outside any WPA regulated areas are not otherwise subject to regulation under the WPA, provided that the work is performed solely within the buffer zone in a manner which reduces the potential for any adverse impacts to the resource area during construction, and with post-construction measures implemented to stabilize any disturbed areas?

Would we know if our project consisted of a minor activity within the buffer zone? Would we know if our minor activity reduced the potential for any adverse impacts to the resource area? Or, would we already be exhausting our time and/or our client’s money on finessing a creative permitting strategy in front of the local Conservation Commission that is simply not necessary?

In this article, we’ll briefly review the 17 minor activities within the buffer zone, which may not otherwise be subject to regulation under the WPA. Please note that during a project’s initial evaluation, it is likely that the verbiage within each of the minor activity categories described in the WPA regulations may be misinterpreted, may be under-defined, or may be further reviewed and interpreted by a local Conservation Commission with more strict wetlands protection regulations and bylaws. It may be best to first consult with a Certified Wetland Scientist or Certified Professional Soil Scientist with significant permitting experience and a candid prowess in front of Conservation Commissions in advance of proceeding with a project-based presumption of “not otherwise subject to regulation”. It may also be beneficial to notify Conservation Commissions when activities “not otherwise subject to regulation” are proposed, as this supports good communication between the subcontractor, applicant, owner; and the conservation commission, should future work be planned for the proposed project.

The 17 minor activities listed within the WPA include: Unpaved pedestrian walkways less than 30 inches wide for private use and less than three feet wide for public access on conservation property.

Fencing (provided it will not constitute a barrier to wildlife movement), stonewalls or stacks of cordwood.

Vista pruning, provided the activity is located

David Gorden is a certified wetland scientist and certified professional soil scientist. He has been the recipient of the Environmental Business Council’s Committee Leadership Award; has achieved a LEAN Construction Yellow Belt; has been appointed as a director on the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions board of directors, and serves as a networking committee chair for the Association of Massachusetts Wetland Scientists. He is the manager of Thunderchase Environmental LLC, which provides environmental consulting services to the AEC industry. He may be contacted by email at ThunderchaseLFECS@gmail.com

20

Winter 2017

more than 50 feet from the mean annual high water (MAHW) line within a riverfront area (RFA) or from bordering vegetated wetland (BVW), whichever is farther. Pruning of landscaped areas is not subject to jurisdiction under the WPA. Plantings of native species of trees, shrubs or groundcover, but excluding turf lawns.

The conversion of lawn to uses accessory to residential structures such as decks, sheds, patios, pools, replacement of a basement bulkhead and the installation of a ramp for compliance with accessibility requirements, provided the activity, including material staging and stockpiling is located more than 50 feet from the MAHW line within the RFA, bank or from BVW, whichever is farther, and erosion and sedimentation controls are implemented during construction. The conversion of such uses accessory to existing single family houses to lawn is also allowed. Mowing of lawns is not subject to jurisdiction under the WPA. The conversion of impervious to vegetated surfaces, provided erosion and sedimentation controls are implemented during construction.

Activities that are temporary in nature, have negligible impacts and are necessary for planning and design purposes provided that resource areas are not crossed for site access. These may include the installation of monitoring wells, exploratory borings, sediment sampling and surveying and percolation tests for septic systems.

Installation of directly embedded utility poles and associated anchors, push braces or grounding mats/ rods along existing paved or unpaved roadways and private roadways/driveways, and their existing maintained shoulders, or within existing railroad rights-of-way, provided that all work is conducted within 10 feet of the road or driveway shoulder and is a minimum of 10 feet from the edge of the bank or BVW and as far away from resource areas as practicable, with no additional tree clearing or substantial grading within the buffer zone, and provided that all vehicles and machinery are located within the roadway surface during work.

Installation of underground utilities (e.g., electric, gas, water) within existing paved or unpaved roadways

and private roadways/driveways, provided that all work is conducted within the roadway or driveway and that all trenches are closed at the completion of each workday.

Installation and repair of underground sewer lines within existing paved or unpaved roadways and private roadways/driveways, provided that all work is conducted within the roadway or driveway and that all trenches are closed at the end of completion of each workday.

Installation of new equipment within existing or approved electric or gas facilities when such equipment is contained entirely within the developed/disturbed existing fenced yard.

Installation of access road gates at public or private road entrances to existing utility right-of-way access roads, provided that all vehicles and machinery are located within the roadway surface during work.

Removal of existing utility equipment (poles, anchors, lines) along existing or approved roadways or within existing or approved electric, water or gas facilities, provided that all vehicles and machinery are located within the roadway surface during work.

Vegetation cutting for road safety maintenance, limited to the following: Removal of diseased or damaged trees or branches that pose an immediate and substantial threat to driver safety from falling into the roadway.

Removal of shrubbery or branches to maintain clear guardrails; such removal shall extend no further than 6 feet from the rear of the guardrail.

Removal of shrubbery or branches to maintain sight distances at existing intersections; such removal shall be no farther than 5 feet beyond the “sight triangles” established according to practices set forth in American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ “A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets,” 2011, 6th edition, and such removal is a minimum of 10 feet from a resource area, other than riverfront area; and removal of shrubbery, branches, or other vegetation required to maintain the visibility of road signs and signals.

Please note that for the above, The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MADEP) recommends that cuttings of shrubs and branches from mature trees will be

performed with suitable horticultural equipment and methods that do not further damage the trees. To prevent the possible export of invasive plants, MADEP recommends that cut vegetation should be chipped and evenly spread on site, provided the chips are spread outside the buffer zone, and raked to a depth not to exceed 3 inches, clear of all drainage ways. MADEP also indicates that, alternatively, all cuttings and slash shall be removed from the site and properly disposed.

Installation, repair, replacement or removal of signs, signals, sign and signal posts and associated supports, braces, anchors and foundations along existing paved roadways and their shoulders, provided that work is conducted as far from resource areas as practicable, and is located a minimum of 10 feet from a resource area, any excess soil is removed from the project location, and any disturbed soils are stabilized as appropriate.

Pavement repair, resurfacing and reclamation of existing roadways within the right-of-way configuration provided that the roadway and shoulders are not widened, no staging or stockpiling of materials, all disturbed road shoulders are stabilized within 72 hours of completion of the resurfacing or reclamation, and no work on the drainage system is performed, other than adjustments and/or repairs to respective structures within the roadway.

The repair or replacement of an existing and lawfully located driveway servicing not more than two dwelling units provided that all work remains within the existing limits of the driveway and all surfaces are permanently stabilized within 14 days of final grade.

It’s important to note that activities within the buffer zone which do not meet the requirements of the above are subject to preconstruction review through the filing of a determination of applicability to clarify jurisdiction or a notice of intent under the provisions of the WPA. For additional information on minor activities as well as jurisdictional areas under the WPA, you may contact MADEP directly. You may also visit the MADEP electronic version of the Wetlands Protection Act regulations (310 CMR 10.00), effective Oct. 24, 2014, at www.mass.gov/eea/docs/dep/ service/regulations/310cmr10a.pdf. s

The Professional Contractor

21

MEDIATION BY JOHN CURRAN

Mediation and You

I

n recent years, the construction industry has sought alternative forms of dispute resolution to avoid the high cost inherent in hotly-contested litigation. One of these alternatives is mediation.

Mediation is a settlement negotiation conducted through a neutral third-party mediator. Mediation can be voluntary or required by the contract, or in some instances, may be required by the court in which the dispute is pending. Whether voluntary or required, mediation is non-binding and any party can end the process at any stage of the mediation by refusing to budge.

The hope for mediation is that reasonableness will prevail over intransigence: that both parties will recognize they are better off compromising at an early stage rather than battling for years over documents, testimony and expert opinion, all of which involves uncertain result but certain high costs.

Since most litigation is settled without a full trial, but after extensive and costly proceedings, mediation affords the parties the opportunity to reach the same settlement at an earlier, less-traumatic and less-costly stage.

How does mediation work? First, the parties must select a mediator. The American Arbitration Association maintains a panel of mediators familiar with construction disputes. There are also a number of private dispute resolution services that maintain panels of mediators and a number of individual mediators who can be retained directly. The key to the selection of a mediator is to find a person who is experienced in construction, has the skills to analyze disputes, frame issues and evaluate claims and who John M. Curran is a partner at the law firm of Corwin & Corwin LLP. He can be reached at 617-742-3420 or at jcurran@corwinlaw.com.

22

Winter 2017

has the training and personality to keep the parties focused on a course of discussion that will lead to settlement. Usually the mediator is a retired judge, a lawyer or an industry professional. The parties to the dispute are responsible for the mediator’s compensation which can be substantial depending on the experience of the mediator and the time required.

But when measured against the overall expense of litigating a construction dispute, the mediator’s compensation is a bargain at any price, particularly if the mediation is successful.

Second, the mediation process must be established and scheduled. There are no standardized rules governing procedure. The parties and the mediator must agree where and how the mediation will be conducted. Usually a mediation will progress in four stages:

Stage 1: The Pre-Mediation Memorandum Each party submits its version of the facts, issues and amounts in controversy so that the mediator can understand the dispute prior to meeting with the parties.

Stage 2: The Initial Meeting The mediation begins with the mediator, all parties and their counsel together in one group.

The mediator will usually explain his/her role and the method to be used to identify the major disputes and to assist the parties in reaching a settlement of the conflicting claims. Each party is given the opportunity to present its view of the facts, the dispute, the amount it is seeking and why its position is correct. In turn, every other party presents its views.

The mediator may question the parties to clarify and highlight facts and issues, and to establish each party’s precise position so that both the parties and the mediator are focused on the same issues.

Stage 3: The Caucuses The mediator meets separately with each party to further explore the claims of that party. The objective is to highlight the risks and liabilities of the litigation to that party, and to attempt to determine where compromise and tradeoffs may exist. The mediator may discuss his/her views of the facts and the law, and give a frank evaluation of the party’s claim in an attempt to make that party realistically appraise the potential strengths and weaknesses of its position. The mediator also will attempt to identify issues on which there is potential agreement, and to segregate those issues which appear to be the sticking points preventing settlement. The mediator may go

back and forth between the parties during this stage to determine if a modified viewpoint of one party will result in modification by the other party. If at some point the issue turns into a gap between the amount of money that one party is willing to accept and the amount that the other party is willing to offer, the mediator will attempt to determine whether there is room for compromise between the two figures.

Stage 4: The Final Joint Conference If caucusing has not produced a settlement, the mediator will generally bring the parties back together in a single group to explain how s/he views the dispute and its potential for resolution, and will further explore whether the gap between the parties is such that there is room for additional compromise. If this final joint meeting does not result in a settlement the mediator may end the mediation or attempt to reconvene the mediation after the parties review their positions.

Can mediation work? Absolutely! It has been the means of resolving many difficult construction disputes. But it can only work when the parties are ready to realistically look at the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and their prospect for recovery in light of the cost, time involvement and risks of litigation, and are willing to compromise to avoid further litigation. It does not work where the dispute is one manufactured by a party who is simply unable or unwilling to compromise.

Where there is a good faith dispute, a willingness by all parties to address that dispute in a spirit of compromise, and a mediator who is knowledgeable in construction disputes and has the ability to combine aggressiveness, persistence and patience, the mediation process can assist parties in reaching a resolution which everyone can live with. The relatively low cost of mediation compared with the higher cost and other pitfalls of litigation can make mediation well worth the effort. s

ConsensusDocs continued from 5 Lastly, today’s construction market has vastly improved to the point that those “weaker” parties in the contractual chain are getting stronger and are going to demand fairer contracts regardless.

Even if you do not use a standard contract document whole-cloth, updates to consensus standard contracts are extremely valuable to ensure your contractual practices are keeping up with the pace of today’s industry. ConsensusDocs will continue to create new documents, guidebook comments and updates to help move the entire industry forward in a way that benefits constructors, owners and design professionals alike with better project results and less claims. In 10 years, ConsensusDocs has become a serious option with a track record of success. During the next 10 years, they should become the default standard for a better foundation on which to build. s Brian Perlberg is executive director of ConsensusDocs. He works in the Washington, D.C. area and can be reached at bperlberg@ consensusDocs.org.

Risk Management is more than just Insurance.

We assist you with: • Contractual risk transfer • Selection of appropriate deductible and retention levels • Claims management • Loss control • Surety

1 Mercantile Street, Suite 710, Worcester, MA 01608 | 72 River Park, Needham Heights, MA 02494 www.sullivangroup.com

The Professional Contractor

23

PREFAB CONSTRUCTION BY OTTO KINZEL

The Advantages of Prefabricated Construction Advantages to Project Schedule

One of the biggest competitive advantages a contractor can achieve on a construction project is the ability to meet and exceed the project’s schedule. Weather delays, material shortages and production delays are just some of the issues that can lead a project to fall behind schedule.

Also, projects with multiple phases can often be on a very tight deadline. Prefabrication offers the contractor significant advantages in all of these areas by being able to manufacture the applicable scope of a given project in a climate controlled, off-site venue that allows for a completed assembly (e.g. structural components, finish assemblies, mechanical assemblies, etc.) to be delivered intact to the site. This also helps to eliminate the need to coordinate several trades who would typically work on the same portion of a job at once.

Another advantage is having the ability to keep other trades working (for example, foundations being poured while exterior EIFS wall panels are being fabricated, or while a roof system is shop-fabricated). This greatly improves productivity and can save weeks, sometimes even months (depending on the size of the project) on the schedule.

Safety

P

refabricated construction has been around for several decades now, yet there seems to be a lot of confusion over what benefits and advantages prefabricated construction offers. It is my personal experience that it comes down to a preformed perception of “what” prefab entails and where the specific opportunities are on a given project.

Prefabricated construction can often lead to significantly shorter project schedules, greater safety for the workers involved, better jobsite coordination and a greater control over the quality of the materials being prefabricated.

Let’s examine: 24

Winter 2017

OSHA refers to the controlling of a safety hazard at its source as engineering control.

All job site environments have some inherent danger – it’s the nature of our profession.

Prefabrication can (and should) be viewed as a way of controlling potential jobsite hazards by moving the scope of this work to an offsite location. For example, of the “Fatal Four” causes of jobsite fatalities that OSHA lists on their site, falls account for almost 39 percent of total deaths in construction.

Our experience with prefabricating walls, roof systems and other materials is such that we can limit the amount of exposure a worker has when it comes to height. This is almost always substantially less than what the worker would experience building it on-site, as our workers are almost always on the ground, or at most only a couple of feet off the ground (when absolutely necessary). On an active jobsite, this traditionally

requires a worker to be several feet (and sometimes stories) up in the air, thus greatly increasing the chances and severity of a fall.

It’s worth repeating that being able to build in a controlled, offsite environment with a qualified, lean construction crew is not only efficient but also significantly safer. It’s much easier to enforce specific protocols and procedures than on an active jobsite that is using “stick frame” construction. More trades leads to more work, typically with scaffolding and other materials scattered about. This obstruction of the available space increases the chances of injury for a worker on these sites.

on the Medical Construction and Design’s website outlines the sustainable practices used in modern construction, and specifically cites the advantages of prefab construction (www.mcdmag.com/2015/10/ recycle-reuse-todays-wastediversion-efforts-in-healthcareconstruction-save-green/#.

WgCd2NCnGUl).

We see prefabricated construction options increasing within our industry over the next several years. FMI reports in a recent survey that the amount of project work using prefab has almost tripled from 2010 (13 percent) to 2016 (35 percent), and there is no indication that the trend will slow.

In addition, according to the FMI survey results, “contractors

using prefab on more than 50 percent of their projects are more effective compared to those who do less prefab.”

As more building professionals become familiar with the benefits of prefab, we feel the demand for this approach on commercial and residential projects will increase dramatically. The clear benefits of high-quality work combined with quick, cost-effective erection and environmentallyfriendly construction practices will demand that more construction companies give the option of prefabrication serious consideration for their next project. s

Quality Control

Taking into consideration the points mentioned above, as well as today’s highly complex wall assemblies, a heightened sense of control over manufacturing quality is very important.

At Atlantic Prefab we never see a “stock” wall panel that can be built from generic specifications; rather, every wall panel project is vastly different from the previous job we’ve been contracted to build. Again, having the full use of a climate controlled, purpose-built area to manufacture said materials is critically important. For example, our facility is in excess of 130,000 square feet; our team does not have to worry about harsh weather or being exposed to the elements. This large space gives us versatility, but isn’t so large than we can’t easily ensure quality. We are able to closely monitor every step of the process when we are tasked with prefabricating a portion of the building, which includes design, manufacturing and delivery.

Because of this, many prefabricated manufactures are able to also minimize the amount of waste generated by the materials being used.

A recent case study published

Otto Kinzel is the sales and estimating manager for Atlantic Prefabrication (www.atlanticprefab.com), which specializes in the design and fabrication of prefabricated building components and systems. He can be reached at okinzel@atlanticprefab.com or at 603-824-9690.

Three Generations of People Protecting People The Herlihy

Construction Division We speak your language.

Our Construction Division has specialized in your industry for over 85 years.

Contact us today and see the in your business.

Property/Liability | Fleet Automobile | Workers Compensation | Surety Bonding Contractors Equipment | Group Health | Subcontractors Design E&O Pollution Liability | Railroad Protective

888-756-5159 www.herlihygroup.com/construction 51 Pullman Street, Worcester, MA 01606

Jim Herlihy CIC, CRIS jimherlihy@herlihygroup.com Mark Herlihy CIC, CRIS mherlihy@herlihygroup.com

Member: Associated Subcontractors of MA | Builders Association of Central MA

The Professional Contractor

25

BUDDING DEVELOPMENTS BY TOBIAS W. CRAWFORD AND JASON M. MCGRAW

Massachusetts’ Highest Court Extends Handicap Discrimination Law Protections to Medical Marijuana Users

T

he legal landscape governing marijuana use in Massachusetts continues to evolve.

In 2012, Massachusetts voters approved the Humanitarian Medical Use of Marijuana Initiative, which allows patients with certain medical conditions to use marijuana for medical purposes. In 2016, Massachusetts voters approved the Massachusetts Marijuana Legalization Initiative, which allows non-patients to use marijuana recreationally subject to strict regulations. Many states have passed similar laws in recent years.

In fact, 29 states have now enacted medical marijuana laws and eight states have enacted recreational marijuana laws.

Even as more states legalize marijuana for medical and recreational use, marijuana possession remains unlawful under federal law. In fact, the Drug Enforcement Agency continues to classify marijuana as a “Schedule 1” drug, with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” As a result of this classification, marijuana is subject to the highest level of regulation under the Controlled Substances Act. With marijuana legal under state law and illegal under federal law, many Massachusetts employers wondered whether state disability law provided any protections for medical marijuana users who used marijuana to treat a medical condition. Employers with zero-tolerance drug testing policies in particular lacked clarity on whether Massachusetts law required them to provide an exception to users of legally-prescribed medical marijuana.

On July 17, 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held in Barbuto v. Advantage Sales and Marketing, LLC, 477 Mass. 456 (2017) that an employer may not discriminate against a handicapped employee based on the employee’s off-site, off-duty use of lawfully prescribed medical marijuana. When a handicapped employee requests to use medical marijuana off-site and off-duty, the employer has an obligation to participate in an interactive process and to provide a reasonable accommo26

Winter 2017

dation unless such an accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer’s business. Depending on the circumstances, an employer may have to grant exceptions to zero-tolerance drug testing policies for medical marijuana users as a reasonable accommodation.

The Barbuto Decision

In 2014, Advantage Sales and Marketing LLC hired Cristina Barbuto for an entry-level sales position. When Advantage told Barbuto that she had to take a mandatory drug test, Barbuto disclosed that she suffered from Crohn’s disease, that she used medical marijuana to treat her condition and that she would not use medical marijuana before or at work. Despite initially notifying Barbuto that her medical marijuana use did not pose a problem, Advantage ultimately terminated her employment after her drug test results came back positive for marijuana.

Barbuto responded by filing suit. She principally contended that her termination constituted handicap discrimination under Massachusetts’s anti-discrimination law. Advantage responded that marijuana use constitutes a federal crime and thus Massachusetts antidiscrimination law did not protect her use of medical marijuana. Advantage’s position was not without legal support; courts in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Michigan had all declined to extend state anti-discrimination laws to medical marijuana users under similar logic.

The SJC broke from these cases and sided with Barbuto. The SJC held that Massachusetts’ medical marijuana law makes “the use and possession of medically prescribed marijuana by a qualifying patient … as lawful as the use and possession of any other prescribed medication.”

Therefore, if medical marijuana is “the most effective medication for the employee’s debilitating medical condition,” a Massachusetts employer may have to provide an exception from

its drug policy to permit the employee to use medical marijuana off-site. Significantly, the SJC specifically noted that the marijuana law does not require employers to accommodate on-site use of marijuana.

The SJC left open the possibility in Barbuto that the off-site use of medical marijuana may not constitute a reasonable accommodation in all circumstances. The SJC recognized that for some employees accommodating medical marijuana use off-site may impose an undue burden on their employers. The SJC stated that an undue burden may be proven where the use of medical marijuana would: •• impair the employee’s performance of their work; •• pose an unacceptably significant safety risk to the public, the employee, or fellow employees; or •• violate an employer’s contractual or statutory obligations, thereby jeopardizing its ability to perform its business. (The United States Department of Transportation, for example, prohibits certain safety‐sensitive employees from using marijuana, and federal contracting law likewise imposes some restrictions on government contractors regarding marijuana use.)

Implications of the SJC’s Decision

The SJC’s Barbuto decision is now the law in Massachusetts. Employers should be aware of the implications of the opinion and take appropriate steps to comply with the law.

Engage in the interactive process. Where an employer has a drug policy prohibiting the use of marijuana and a qualified handicapped employee requests an accommodation to use medical marijuana, the employer has an obligation to participate in an interactive process and provide a reasonable accommodation unless such an accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer’s business. Whether an employer must ultimately provide an employee with an exemption to its drug policy should be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Review and revise company policies and handbooks. Employers should review their written policies and handbooks to ensure compliance with the law under Barbuto. In particular, employers will want to review their hiring policies, drug policies, drug testing policies, and reasonable accommodation policies. For example: •• Employers should revise “zero tolerance” drug policies.

•• Employers should consider whether they

will provide a mechanism for employees to inform them, prior to a drug test, that they use marijuana for medical purposes, and provide supporting documentation, such as a copy of their medical marijuana card and a doctor’s note.

•• Employers who are not legally or contractually required to test for marijuana should also consider whether to continue such a practice, and, if so, under what circumstances they will test employees for marijuana.

Now that recreational and medical marijuana use is lawful in Massachusetts, many companies have chosen to remove marijuana from their lists of substances tested, instead relying on monitoring and observation of impairment just as they would for alcohol, prescription drugs and other lawful but potentially mind-altering substances.

Review and revise company practices and train employees. Employers should also take appropriate steps to ensure that their practices comply with the law. Managers, supervisors, and human resources professionals should be offered clear instructions or be trained on how to address hiring, drug testing, requests for reasonable accommodation, performance discussions, and discipline in light of Barbuto – especially since the subject of medical marijuana is likely to come up in these contexts. Employers should also consider training supervisors on the signs of impairment and how to handle impairment situations since testing for marijuana is not a reliable indicator of impairment at work.

Communicate policy changes to your thirdparty drug testing agencies. Employers should communicate any revisions to their drug policies and drug testing policies to their third-party drug testing agencies. Such agencies will need to know whether (and when) to test for marijuana and, if so, how to handle test results that are positive for marijuana.

Understand what’s not required. Nothing in the Barbuto opinion requires employers to tolerate the recreational use of marijuana by an employee. The Barbuto opinion also explicitly states that the Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Act does not require employers to permit on-site medical use of marijuana as an accommodation to an employee. s

Tobias Crawford and Jason McGraw are attorneys with the employment law firm Hirsch Roberts Weinstein. They can be reached at 617-348-4300 or at tcrawford@ hrwlawyers.com or jmcgraw@hrwlawyers.com, respectively.

The Professional Contractor

27

HIGH RISE BUILDING

BY DOUG BAILEY

The High Risks of Building High Rises

D

arren Messina insists to anyone who asks that he sleeps soundly. But he’d be forgiven for fits of tossing and turning. He is, after all, managing the detail, logistics, scheduling and risks that come with building what will be the tallest residential high-rise building in New England.

When it’s done, do you know how Messina will learn if the building is leaning or even tilting even a tiny fraction of an inch, because of high winds or any ground shifts? Satellites, soaring hundreds of miles off in space, will tell him so.

Messina, the executive vice president of Cambridge-based Carpenter & Company, is overseeing the construction of One Dalton, a 742-foot Back Bay luxury hotel and 160-unit condominium tower. As the city’s third tallest building, just eight feet shorter than the Prudential Tower and roughly 80 feet shorter than 200 Clarendon Street (commonly known as the John Hancock Building), it will permanently alter the Boston skyline.

And it will give its residents a vantage point no one else has ever had in Boston.

“You’ll have people living way up there,” Mes28

Winter 2017

sina says. “You don’t want them to get the feeling of any drift or movement, and certainly not any leaning.”

Though One Dalton’s size is modest by some standards (at 742 feet, it would be eclipsed by nearly four dozen New York City skyscrapers, including at least either that are more than 1,000 feet tall), the increasing complexity and risks as the deadly fire at a London high-rise in June revealed, are enormous to insurance companies and risk consulting services In a downtown Boston site like that, it’s a very tight site, not a lot of space to make an error,” said Giles Boucher, the senior vice president of claims and risk control for Cross Insurance. He said if a worker high above kicks off a wrench, and the proper netting isn’t in place, the consequences could be severe.

And lately, he said, he’s seen more and more horror stories about cranes collapsing on huge projects. “A crane sitting on top and hoisting materials up all day long, it defies the laws of gravity,” he said.

One Story Versus 61 Stories Listening to Messina calmly describe how the massive One Dalton project comes together, it sounds as if constructing 61 stories is no different than building one; you just have to do it 61 times.

Of course, that’s not really true.

Building something this tall, Messina has to think about the impact of natural catastrophes: earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, and blizzards.

The threat posed by wind loads and fire; the varying wind speeds between ground and higher levels; the elastic shortening of building elements as the weight of the building increases; pumping and placing concrete and other materials like windows at high levels; and, perhaps most important, making sure the building stays level, truly vertical, and doesn’t sway much.

And there is one particularly unique problem for managing risk at One Dalton: It sits on a small triangular footprint.

“My wife is an architect and she looked at it before we started working

on it and she said, “No way. It can’t be done,” Messina said. “It’s a 14,000 square-foot building on a 15,000 square-foot site. It’s tight.”

To build One Dalton, engineers had to bore 165 feet into the bedrock and then about 20 feet into the rock on the sides to install sockets for heavy bracings in the foundation. Then, as the building goes up, a giant belt truss is installed to mitigate movement.

As a result, extra care has to be taken to insure the construction doesn’t disrupt or weaken nearby structures or foundations. Pedestrians and traffic need to continue to move very close to where workers are installing giant glass windows and concrete towers, and it all adds risk to the overall construction. Anyone who remembers what happened in the early 1970s when giant glass windows began falling out of the Hancock Tower and crashing on to the sidewalk can relate.

Snow removal becomes an added issue as several feet of snow on the top of a high-rise during construction cannot be simply pushed off the side to the

street below and must be slowly melted and drained.

Swaying in the Breeze How will they tell if the building is still standing perfectly straight? Geosynchronous satellites, of course, which are orbiting satellites that return to the same position in space each day and trace a path in the sky. Such precision is critical, because if the building veers by just a fraction of an inch, the elevators could scrape the walls as they try to move –just one example of potential impact.

Swaying is only one of the concerns Messina ticks off when he talks about the risks of building a high rise.

One slight variance or any unanticipated event could halt the entire project or, worse, inject a dangerous unforeseen risk into the completed building.

He also has to manage tons of concrete trucked outside the city, as the timing from the moment it leaves the plant to the time it arrives on site has to be carefully tracked because the continued on page 30 The Professional Contractor

29

High Rise Building continued from 29 cement will weaken if not poured within a specific timeframe. Thousands of pounds of concrete would have to be discarded because of a small traffic jam.

“It makes the logistical planning that much more critical,” Messina said. “There’s no real staging area where we can lay materials, so everything has to be carefully planned.”

And then there’s the issue of worker safety, as construction crews install floors, windows, and other framing components while in the open air 700 feet overhead, navigating around enormous cranes and swinging beams. Dangerous as it sounds, innovations in modern construction techniques have significantly lessened the risks to workers themselves.

“We build a ‘cocoon’ that encases the workers but also protects people below,” says Robert Sullivan, vice president and project executive at AECOM Tishman, which has managed some of the largest and most complex developments in the U.S. “So after initial construction they are completely enclosed for the duration and it’s self-jacking, so as they move up the cocoon moves up with them.”

Typically, this “cocoon” is at least three decks, Sullivan explains, with little elevators at the corners for moving material between the various decks.

“It provides a good, stable, and efficient work environment that could be on ground level or could be 70 stories in the air,” he said.

Perhaps the greatest innovation that helps lower risk is advanced computer technology. Construction engineers today can “build” entire buildings down to the last digital detail long before actually breaking ground. That digital replica can signal in advance where difficulties and conflicts will arise, and they can be resolved before a shovel goes into the ground.

“Having a 3-D visual of the project really helps the builders,” says Rachel Hildebrand at Suffolk Construction, the manager of building information modeling and virtual design. “The contractors, the subcontractors, and everyone else has access to the data and visuals in the field in real time, right on site, so they can see where risks and tolerances are cropping up and share it with whomever they need.”

And then design changes can be made to the computer30

Winter 2017

ized schematics instantly, Hildebrand said, allowing engineers to immediately see what effects those changes will have and whether they will involve greater risk evaluation.

One big factor: The safety of the residents. “There are obvious challenges with tall buildings,” said Boucher of Cross Insurance. “You can’t run out of the building on the second floor, you need a carefully thought out evacuation plan.” And that plan can’t just be for people who can walk and run, he said. It has to prepare for people in wheelchairs or other impairments.

None of these challenges, however, is slowing down the momentum in tall building construction. Plans for buildings taller than One Dalton have already been proposed in Boston but so far none approved.

“Things can fall off a building during construction, everything from hoisting sections into place or workers dropping a tool,” said Fran McCormack, director of risk control services at Cross Insurance. “Boston in general has become more sophisticated when it comes to safety. Obviously there is always a moral desire to be safe. But there are also financial incentives.”

Currently the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, stands at 2,717 feet. But construction has begun for an even taller building, the Jeddah Tower, in Saudi Arabia, which, when it opens in 2019, will be at least 3,280 feet tall.

Construction experts and risk insurance services say they expect within the next 10 years, someone will build a mile-high building, a thought that really does keep risk analysts and fire and safety officials up at night. s (This article first appeared in the Boston Globe on September 25, 2017, which can be viewed at http://sponsored. bostonglobe.com/future-forward/thehigh-risks-of-building-high-rises/)

Doug Bailey is a former business reporter and editor for the Boston Globe, as well as the president of DBMedia Strategies, a Boston-based public relations and communications firm.

MEMBER NEWS FOR WINTER 2017 A Playground Rises from Tragedy, Thanks to Fernandes Masonry

After their 14-year-old son Noah passed away from M.E.L.A.S., a severe and degenerative mitochondrial disease, Victor Fernandes of Fernandes Masonry made a commitment to try to help other families with physically-disabled children. This fall, his efforts resulted in the groundbreaking of Noah’s Place Playground on New Bedford’s Pope Island.

Funded by the Team Noah Foundation – the charity launched by Victor Fernandes to help fund research for the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, and to ensure no stricken child goes without needed medical equipment, Noah’s Place Playground will be built to accommodate the needs of children with multiple disabilities, such as swings that allow for wheelchairs to be fastened to them, and merry-go-rounds designed with family assistance in mind.

The Team Noah Foundation approached New Bedford in 2015 to propose the playground, which will be the largest and most sensory-rich inclusive playground in New England, ensuring that children with disabilities in our region will have a safe, much-needed space to enjoy the simple playground pleasures that most families take for granted. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell and city officials joined Victor Fernandes and members of the Team Noah Foundation for the groundbreaking. The playground is still in need of mul-

tiple items, including a full bucket seat swing; a wheelchair platform swing; freestanding play elements, and more. For more information, including playground donations, please visit www.teamnoahfoundation.org.

Capital Carpet to Perform Significant Portion of Flooring Work at Wynn Casino

Capital Carpet and Flooring Specialists in Wilmington, MA, has been selected by the Wynn Design and Development group and Suffolk Construction to provide the installation of all carpet and resilient flooring on the new Wynn Boston Harbor project. The $2.4 billion luxury resort will require over 650,000 square feet of carpet, 185,000 square feet of resilient flooring, nearly 12 miles of vinyl base and over 13 miles of Johnsonite Millwork resilient base!

Capital would like to thank Wynn Design and Development, Suffolk Construction, and the city of Everett for the opportunity to work on this prestigious project.

Griffin Electric Supports Holliston Pantry Shelf

Wayne J. Griffin Electric donated over 40 backpacks filled with school supplies to aid a backpack drive run by the Holliston Pantry Shelf, a charity which offers free assistance to local families through its many programs, including food and paper supply collections, as well as backpack and holiday gift drives. The supplies for this effort are part of Griffin Electric’s broader support of the Holliston Pantry Shelf, which relies entirely on private donations for the assistance it has made available to Holliston residents since 1993.

LAN-TEL Communications Lends a Hand

LAN-TEL Communications Inc. recently provided telecommunications services and data cabling as an in-kind donation for the new 23,000-squarefoot, $3.5 million facility opened by My Brother’s Keeper in Dartmouth on Oct. 8. For the past 29 years, North Easton-based My Brother’s Keeper has served individuals and families by delivering food and furniture to struggling families across Eastern Massachusetts in need.

LAN-TEL has been involved with My Brother’s Keeper for many years and was happy to lend its technical expertise in support of the charity’s mission.

The Professional Contractor

31

PROJECT PHOTO GALLERY

2A

1A

2B

3 1B

4B

1C

4A

1A 1B Atlantic Prefab (Milford, NH) designed and fabricated four stories of load bearing pre-finished exterior panels, including the frameonly interior load bearing panels supporting the precast concrete plank floor system. In addition, the building was topped off with Atlantic Prefab’s CFS roof truss system.

1C Atlantic Prefab supplied nearly 100,000 square feet of CFS roof trusses for the Masonicare Assisted Living Facility in Mystic, CT. The scope of this project ranges from simple mansard trusses to extremely complex profiles and roof lines. The large spans and 20-foot high assembled trusses do not require compression web bracing, eliminating thousands of man hours.

2A Drake Company (Holliston) paved the cart paths at the Pine Crest Golf Course in Holliston.

2B Drake Company planted new trees along holes at Newton’s Woodland Golf Course.

32

Winter 2017

4C

3 JM Electrical (Lynnfield) installed a complete HVAC control system at Reebok’s corporate headquarters, which occupies 220,000 square feet of space spanning five floors of the Innovation & Design Building in the Seaport.

4A Daniel Marr & Son (South Boston) is erecting the new athletics field house on Boston College’s Chestnut Hill campus. Also on site are Marr aerial lifts and a crane.

4B Marr Crane & Rigging set containers and assisted with the installation of dome tent structures throughout downtown Boston using cranes and lifts, as well as a composite crew of iron workers and riggers.

4C Marr Scaffolding Company’s Scaffold and Power Divisions worked for Karas & Karas Glass building scaffold towers to support motorized picking beams for the glass installation of a roof screen wall at The Point in Boston. Marr also installed swing staging to support louver installation and glass repair.

4D Marr Scaffolding Company and Marr Crane & Rigging worked for CoxGomyl and Boston Properties installing scaffolding and equipment to replace the window washing unit at the top of the John Hancock Building in Boston’s Back Bay. 4E Isaac Blair & Co., Marr’s specialty shoring company, worked for Dellbrook I JKS to install shoring at 99 Tremont Street Apartments in Brighton, MA, to hold the structure in place while the foundation was removed.

4D

5A 5B MAS Building and Bridge Inc. (Norfolk) erected the structural steel and miscellaneous metals for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Doppler Radar facility in Block Island, RI. s

4E

5A

5B

Protection starts here

and here.

DeSanctis Insurance Agency

Serving the Bonding and Insurance needs of the N.E. construction industry for over 40 years.

Ad a m De Sa n c t i s Br y a n Ju w a

Gre g o r y Ju w a

Da v i d B o u t i e t t e

Ja m e s A xo n

Mi c h a e l Ca rn e y

Pa u l Pa t a l a n o

Dick Caruso

Wi l d e r Pa rk s

Jonathan Duggan

DeSanctis Insurance Agency, Inc. 100 Unicorn Park Drive Woburn, MA 01801 (781) 935-8480 www.desanctisins.com

Mi c h a e l Gi l b e r t Jordan Tirone

The Professional Contractor

33

PROJECT PHOTO GALLERY 6 8A

8B

6 M.L. Schmitt Inc. (Springfield) performed electrical contracting work at the Springfield Redevelopment Authority’s Union Station project.

7A College’s Stetson Hall received the 7A Millwork One’s (Cranston, RI) high-end millwork at Williams Architectural Woodwork Institute (AWI) Award of Excellence for the Winter of 2017.

7A

7B

7B Millwork One received another AWI Award of Excellence (Fall 2017) for its work at the Great Horse Country Club in Hampden.

7C Millwork One provided extensive lobby and amenities at millwork at the 131 Beverly St. building at Boston’s Lovejoy Wharf.

8A 8B N.B. Kenney (Devens) completed challenging HVAC work on the New England Conservatory’s new 128,000-square-foot Student Life and Performance Center building.

7C

We Stand Apart from the Crowd.

As one of New England’s leading insurance brokers, we possess the skills and resources necessary to provide your business with the very best risk management, insurance and employee benefit solutions available today. We understand that each of our clients has a unique risk profile, and we provide custom-tailored services to meet specific, individual needs. Call us today to experience the difference.

Property & Casualty

Risk Management

Employee Benefits

300 First Ave., Suite 100, Needham, MA 02494

P : (781) 431-2500 www.nsins.com info@nsins.com

34

Winter 2017

9A R&R Window (Easthampton) installed a curtain wall at the UMass-Amherst Design Building that utilized smart glass which can dynamically change tint under programmable conditions.

9B

9A

9C

9B R&R Window also installed aluminum wall panels with a specialized copper anodized finish at the UMass-Amherst Design Building.

9C R&R Window’s work at Clark University featured a silk screened, custom patterned glass canopy and laminated glass signage, as well as the installation of all the curtain wall glass of the building.

9D R&R Window furnished and installed complex radiused curtain walls and motorized sunshades at the CREC Academy of Aerospace and Engineering, Windsor, CT.

9D

10A

11A

11B

9E

9E R&R Window installed large curtain wall expanses, featuring custom extruded and custom painted cover caps, at the Linx office/lab building in Watertown.

10B

10A 10B Wayne J. Griffin Electric Inc. (Holliston) completed the electrical installation at the University of Vermont’s new residence hall and dining facility.

11C

11A 11B 11C William F. Lynch Company (Worcester) performed the HVAC and plumbing work at Holy Cross University’s newly-renovated and expanded Hart Center.

ASM PARTNER SPOTLIGHT DIRECTORY

Airgas, an Air Liquide company, is the leading U.S. distributor of industrial, medical and specialty gases, as well as hardgoods, such as welding equipment, safety products and construction related products

Call Toll-Free 1-866-924-7427 for the Airgas location near you; or visit us on the web at Airgas.com

Frank Smith Executive Vice President Eastern Insurance Construction Division 508 942 2221 fsmith@easterninsurance.com

The Professional Contractor

35

A SHORT TIME FROM NOW IN A BUILDING NOT SO FAR AWAY...