“I NEED YOUR HELP WITH MY BIG BOX”

The opportunity to work with this online national retailer was an aspiration come true for Daniel.?Having been promoted to associate last year and given an option to purchase stock in the architectural firm, he was anxious to prove that his specialty in designing manufacturing and industrial facilities was deserving of this and future recognition.?Daniel was certain that this was a niche that he could grow both locally and nationally.?A referral through Daniel’s personal attorney had led to the modest commission to design a new shipping/receiving support area in an existing warehouse for this retailer, to deliver sealed drawings within the three weeks demanded by their schedule.?While the total design time was just over a month, the retailer admitted that their own corporate indecision had caused the schedule to slip.?They were very pleased with the team that Daniel had led, and were looking forward to more and larger assignments with his practice.

The next chance to work with this retailer was indeed a much more ambitious project.?In another part of the state, the retailer had outgrown a 600,000 square foot fulfillment center in a leased facility.?The landlord had offered to construct a 200,000 square foot addition per an already approved land development plan, but the proposed rent upcharge was considerably higher than what the retailer had typically paid, and could have far-ranging ramifications if the landlords of their other facilities found out about that benchmark.?More importantly, the retailer doubted that this landlord could achieve the ambitious schedule that would be required.?As their facility development vice president confided to Daniel, ceding control of the project to the landlord ran counter to the retailer’s corporate culture.?They were strongly committed to vertical integration in their business, including the development of the facilities in which they worked.

Daniel was initially tasked to find a site, preferably with an already-approved land development plan and nearby utility line connections, this retailer could acquire on which to build a 1.1 million square foot building that Daniel would then be engaged to design.?Contacting his network of commercial/industrial real estate brokers, Daniel determined that few had available sites that could accommodate a building that size, including the required dock aprons needed by the trucks loading and unloading goods, trailer parking, plus the 1,200+ parking spaces needed to accommodate multiple shifts during the pre-Christmas rush.?None had any of those parcels for sale.?“Why would anyone owning a lot that size want to sell it?” was a typical response to his inquiries.?With so few sites that large available, landowners knew it was best to do a land lease, and enjoy the rental annuity income.?

His inability to present this client with land purchase opportunities lead the vice president to agree to have Daniel work with the broker on such land lease opportunities.?The first stumbling block was that many of these land leases required the tenant to use the landowner’s designated design team and contractors to build-to-suit.?The retailer was unwilling to trust the landlord’s selected firms (some of which the landlord typically owned), and had experience that a great lease rate would be more than offset by above market design and construction costs.?A fit was finally identified.?This landowner had approval to build a multitenant big box facility of 1.2 million square feet, creating some market flexibility to subdivide the building for multiple occupants, and offering tenants options to grow into adjacent leaseholds rather than having to move to a larger location.?The landowner’s civil engineer was confident that the site plan could be easily modified to accommodate a single tenant without having to suffer through another full public hearing process.

The vice president and Daniel were impressed by the civil engineer, both for his familiarity with the local approval process and his ability to quickly propose cost effective solutions.?The engineer’s next suggestion reinforced that judgment:?Due to the natural slope of the site, the recommendation was to not construct a level building pad.?For a building that is 2,000 square feet long, a 1/16” slope would be unrecognizable to fork trucks and pedestrians in the building, but could be a difference of 10 feet in elevation from one end to the other, representing tons of fill with the site naturally sloping in one direction.?The engineer offered to demonstrate this feature at a recently completed nearby warehouse in the same industrial park.?There he poured a pitcher of water on the “level floor” of the warehouse, enjoying his companions’ surprise as they watched the water stream trail off toward the far end of the structure.

As they began to discuss the building design, Daniel made an unexpected suggestion that he had previously cleared, after much heated discussion, with his senior partners. ?First, he explained to the vice president that dealing at that scale changes the design perspective.?The focus is now on minimizing the cost of the structure;?ever dime per square foot cost saved represents $100,000+ in construction cost reduction.?Similar math can be used for building-related operating costs.?There are design firms that specialize in perfecting a design model to minimize costs based on years of ongoing research, not something to which Daniel’s expertise extended.?This cost minimizing could not impact code compliance and functionality.?Daniel went on to caution, however, that if he were to work with the retailer to engage one of these expert design firms, they had to be sure that there was no skimping on the roof structure design, based on Daniel’s previous experience.?He had four suggestions:

• Fit Out Suspended Loads:?Design the roof to handle whatever cameras, HVAC equipment (perhaps “Big Ass Fans”) and conveyors that need to be supported from the roof.?Too often in speculative warehouse buildings the design offered limited, code-minimum capacity for the roof structure that required reinforcing later to handle something even as light as electrical conduit at desired locations.
• Solar Panels:?Consider adding enough structural capacity to handle future rooftop solar panels.?These can be expected to become more economically advantageous.?The additional cost of roof structure now will be much less than reinforcing later.
• Snow Loads:?Plan for increasingly extreme snowy weather events, sometimes in areas where there had previously never been heavy snow.?These events have made currently adopted structural capacity codes (some already five years out of date) obsolete.?If solar panels are ever installed, they will further impact roof snow loads due to snow drifts and snow-melt-freeze-ice cycles.
• Roof Access:?Provide easy access to the roof, preferably a stair.?Vertical or ship’s ladders discourage regular checking of roofs for tears or debris that can lead to tears.?Uncomfortable roof access also impacts how often rooftop mounted equipment is checked and serviced.

Not surprisingly, Daniel’s firm’s contract to design the building interior was more lucrative than the fees the other design team received to design the building shell.?The building design consisted of standard details;?the fit out was highly customized.?This warehouse and distribution center design entailed three levels of conveyors and two levels of pick mezzanines.?The offices and employee support areas were all on the main floor.?Per code, restrooms dotted the floor plan so an occupant was always within 500 feet of a bathroom from any spot in the building.?

For Daniel, the key design challenge was building egress.?All occupants needed to travel to an exit in no more than 400 feet, including vertical travel (stairs).?Before coordinating the egress design with the conveyor design, he made a strategic call to the local building inspector, uttering those magic words, “I need your help.”?At the meeting with that official a few days later, Daniel first explained the conveyor design in detail, using a video provided by the conveyor contractor that the official could see on the oculus.?Daniel then reviewed his design approaches to avoid occupants head-knocking low hanging or ramping conveyors.?Finally addressing egress, he identified three big challenges:

• Loading Docks:?Snaking conveyers were specified to bring shipping boxes directly into the trailers with minimal use of fork trucks.?These conveyors, when employed at adjacent docks, would essentially “trap” occupants between them.?Daniel proposed incorporating automatic liftgates that did not rely on building power to create egress paths at the docks.?The code official reminded Daniel that these hinged gates needed to have springs powerful enough to lift even when carrying the heaviest boxes.?Daniel was able to provide the liftgate specs to satisfy the official.
• Egress Distance:?The building was 600 feet wide.?Empty, a 400 foot pathway, even assuming no diagonal travel, would be easy to achieve.?However, with a plethora of conveyors and multiple levels, the only way to achieve the 400 feet would be via stairways to the roof, and to cross the roof to a stairway back to the ground.?While such a pathway could be designed to be fire resistant, human nature was unlikely to consider going up to the roof to escape an emergency.?Keeping such a pathway clear in bad weather was also an issue.?Instead, Daniel proposed that the code official accept the results from a computer model that indicated that smoke accumulation below 10 feet above the floor would not reach dangerous levels in less time than it took to walk 500 feet, a travel distance Daniel could achieve.?This modelling had been developed for multitier sports arenas, and was accepted already in many locales.?This novel use was acceptable to the code official, too.
• Dead Ends:?The conveyor layout created some “dead end” conditions, where an occupant attempting to leave the building during an emergency with little visibility may be trapped traveling down an aisleway that did not lead to an exit door.?A series of liftgates and crossovers were an approved solution to the code official.

When interior buildout construction drawings were submitted for permits a month later, the code official was pleased that her inputs had been incorporated as they had discussed.?With no surprises, the drawings were approved within a week.?The code official was seen smiling in the photo of the groundbreaking, wearing a hardhat and holding a pristine shovel.?She was also present at the ribbon cutting.?The retailer’s vice president was initially concerned that such friendly involvement by the code official might be misconstrued as indicative of corners being cut in the design.?Daniel was able to assure him that there was detailed documentation of every code equivalency and ordinance variance that indicated the design met or exceeded building code.?By first asking the code official for help rather than for approval, Daniel had enlisted her as a stakeholder in the effort, with the mutual desire to make this building safe for the municipality’s residents who would work there as well as meeting the retailer’s operations and financial requirements to be a steady employer and taxpayer in the municipality.