PROJECT UPDATE: ATLANTA BRAVES SPRING TRAINING FACILITY

Our readers were introduced to the Atlanta Braves Spring Training Facility in last April’s issue of Pipeline and we are excited to announce in this issue that this impressive project has reached substantial completion! The Braves finished spring training with a bang on March 24, winning their first game at the new facility, CoolToday Park. We are proud to have played a role in bringing this project to life.
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This facility includes a brand-new stadium with 6,200 fixed seats and 1,000 berm seats, six full and two half practice fields, an agility field, batting cages, pitching mounds, parking facilities, a public plaza, and a 55,000 square foot clubhouse and office building. We were awarded an almost $5,000,000 contract for the electrical and life safety portion of the project in early 2018, while the technology and automation scope was written into a separate approximately $2,500,000 contract in September. As soon as we set foot on the job site, we were already behind with no time to prepare, and we had to meet the substantial completion “TCO” date of March 1, 2019. In spite of the challenge, ALL of the APG groups involved met this date!

In order to stay true to our reputation of finishing on time, we used nearly 70,000 man hours. In that time, we installed approximately 225,000 feet of conduit, 813,000 feet of wire, and 565,700 feet of cable—all together, enough to stretch from here to Savannah, GA. We installed all of the sound system speakers, security cameras, coaches’ cameras, access control, 175 televisions, and 175 wireless access points, along with patching in the Braves complete network infrastructure. Our Electrical and Life Safety groups estimated 150 potential change orders (PCO’s), which added $577,394 worth of work. Our Technology and Building Automation groups estimated 37 PCO’s, which added $376,729 worth of work.

This project presented many obstacles to overcome. We got off to a running start with the underground portion, during which we had to pump water out of the conduits daily. Another challenge was the distance. The distance from our office to the project location in North Port, Sarasota County, is about 85 miles. We were also tied to a tight timeline, which meant working many Saturdays and Sundays. From December through March, our team worked many 60+ hour weeks on top of a 3 hour commute each day. We really appreciate the entire field team whose contributions have made this project a success!

We also appreciate the exceptional coordination and organization of Barton Malow and Tandem Construction. Their management ability made this dream a reality, and we were honored that they chose to partner with us. In addition, our thanks go to Vaughn Orluski, Greg Spetrino, Ted Maczuga, Eric Isaksen, George Loop, George Lambert, Jack Chonsky, Eric Brockmeier, RJ Blake, Josh Falini, Henzell Goodison, Denzell Randolph, Tyler Johnson, Augustine Tapia, Eric Talatinian, Matt Diaz, Gene Wilkins, Eric Quinones, and every other employee who shared their skill, dedication, and hard work.