How 1 JV blended disciplines to succeed with mass timber

Construction Dive’s Job Done series looks at unique projects and the lessons learned by the contractors that built them.

The Brookhaven City Centre is, according to McCarthy Building Cos.’ Carter Schmid, a confluence of communication and bringing different trade disciplines together. 

The 58,250-square-foot structure is the new city hall of Brookhaven, Georgia, a city in DeKalb County located north of Atlanta home to 60,000 people. McCarthy worked alongside Atlanta-based Barnsley Construction Group in a JV.

The building is unique in that it is constructed primarily from mass timber, the only government facility in the state with that distinction, according to the news release. Schmid, a senior project manager for McCarthy, credited constant communication among stakeholders and a blend of trade disciplines for the project’s success.

Here, Schmid talks with Construction Dive about the hurdles — space, building codes and logistics — along with the keys to success on mass timber projects. 

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

CONSTRUCTION DIVE: How did the decision come about to use mass timber?

CARTER SCHMID: It was something that the city included in its RFP from the very beginning. It’s something that’s really kind of growing here in the Southeast and also very popular throughout the country. But I think folks have primarily seen it on the West Coast and Northwest portions of the U.S.

Their goal for the building was for it to be a sustainable building. So, we achieved LEED Gold and WELL Gold. The timber was a big part of that — they wanted the building to not only be sustainable, but be a place that people wanted to come and work in. 

Mass timber construction requires specialized knowledge. How did the team deal with that? 

We’ve had some experience with mass timber, which definitely played a big factor in our success for this job specifically.

But, I would say with mass timber, the big thing is early coordination and understanding what the ultimate aesthetic is.

For Brookhaven, they didn’t want to see a lot of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. They wanted as much of the wood exposed as possible. What that meant for us on the construction side was a lot of coordination efforts on the front end, before wood was ever manufactured and sent over to be installed. 

We have a very robust VDC department that allowed us to set ourselves apart and lean on them to help with that coordination process, as well as our timber fabricator, Binderholz. Bringing on those MEP trade partners and fire protection as well, allowed us to coordinate all of our MEP very early on in the project.

It was a little different for everybody, especially our trade partners, but everybody jumped in at the opportunity and worked diligently to get everything coordinated and planned much earlier in the process. It ultimately made the erection, the downstream production on the job, a lot smoother, having those decisions made earlier and that coordination done earlier in the project.

What were some challenges you had on the build?

We knew that it was going to be a challenge very early on in the project, just from the site being very dense. It was something that we were fortunate to work very closely with Binderholz on and really dove into understanding the manufacturing process that they implement, so we could help better coordinate what pieces were being shipped in which containers.

Obviously, they’re trying to maximize the amount of material they’re shipping in a container. Working with them to understand what pieces were coming, but then going as deep as understanding what pieces and where they were in the container, so then we could better be prepared when they arrived on site, versus double-handling. We wanted to minimize that as much as possible.

Taking that deeper dive into more than, “Okay, we have 20 trucks coming. These are the pieces on each truck. This is how they’re packaged in there,” really helped the team be prepared infinitely better and keep the speed of erection up throughout the project.

Mass timber can be hindered by building codes. How did the JV prepare for that?

We started coordination with the fire marshal for the city of Brookhaven, as well as DeKalb County, very early on in the project. 

The first meeting was simply explaining what we were doing and what the project was, and then it was constant communication through the whole process with them, to make sure they understood the different fire safety measures that were needed in the building.

Luckily, there’s a great nonprofit out there called WoodWorks that does a ton of work on helping building officials understand the codes and how the timber is char rated and how you can maintain fire ratings throughout the whole building utilizing it.

Really it was a collaborative effort with the city officials for all of us to maybe spend a little more time together and discuss what we were up against and make sure everybody knew and understood what we were doing and what was applicable to our jobsite.

How was recruiting labor for this kind of mass timber job?

It actually went really well. We were very fortunate.

Typically, with construction for a concrete building, there’s a lot more trades involved as the structure’s going up from a forming, a reinforcing and potentially post-tensioning aspect.

For timber, we were able to utilize pretty much all of our carpenters that we had and had experience in concrete, as well as some of our steel erection folks, and kind of blended those crews together to really make a successful erection team, if you will.

So the experience of the steel guys and their erection processes for steel, which are very similar, coupled with our carpenter’s experience and form work made that a seamless process. 

We didn’t really struggle with the erection side. It all goes together pretty well. It’s manufactured with such tight tolerances that it benefits the erection side. 

No challenges with finding the right folks to erect it. It was just figuring out the right pieces on each crew so that they all maximize their efficiency.