Central Michigan University needed a facility that enhanced its laboratory and bioscience capabilities in order to provide better quality research opportunities for its students and faculty. The result: a new four-story, 169,000 square foot structure housing classrooms, state-of-the-art laboratories, and specialty research facilities. It also features 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 could manage the complex utility coordination, cost, and schedule on their behalf. Clark Construction led 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 and Construction (VDC) teams streamlined budgeting, preplanning, and prefabrication methods, allowing for an expedited construction timeline which reduced the overall project schedule by three weeks.

During preplanning, our team identified an opportunity to reduce the number of scheduled primary power shutdowns
needed to connect the new facility to an existing campus primary loop. Original plans called for two, five-day shutdowns, but through the off-site prefabrication of electrical 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 terms of cost savings and through minimal operational disruption.

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