Central Michigan University Bioscience Building

Central Michigan University needed a facility that enhanced its laboratory and bioscience capabilities in order to provide greater depth and quality of research opportunities for its students and research faculty. The result: a new four-story, 169,000 square foot structure that houses classrooms, state-of-the-art laboratories, and specialty research facilities featuring an open floor plan that encourages collaboration and flexibility. Because of the size and complexity of the facility and the fact that they were working from a fixed grant and donor budget, CMU needed partners who understood this and could manage the complex utility coordination, cost, and schedule on their behalf. Clark Construction lead the charge and hired Feyen Zylstra as a Design Assist partner to provide expertise in project planning and electrical services.

We successfully completed this project utilizing our unique Design Assist delivery method. From the beginning, our preconstruction and Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) teams streamlined budgeting, planning, and fabrication methods. This allowed for an expedited construction timeline, reducing the overall project schedule by three weeks. 

One of many successful coordination items identified during preplanning was a reduction in the quantity of scheduled primary power shutdowns required to connect the new facility to an existing campus primary loop. Original plans called for two, fiveday shutdowns.Through off-site fabrication of assemblies and coordination with other project partners, we were able to trim that window down to one, three day shutdown. The benefits were directly recognized by the owner both in cost and excess operational disruption.

Additional services provided by Feyen Zylstra included installation of all normal, standby and critical power systems, lighting, lighting controls, fire alarm system, building management system, and a distributed antenna system network. This was a three year project from bid to completion.