Week 9 – Pontiac – Clay Kurkechian
July 17, 2017
Week 10 – Volunteer Week- Milkey
July 17, 2017
Week 7 came to an end on Friday and I can’t believe we are already halfway through the summer. The BuildU program has given me a great amount of exposure thus far. I look forward to connecting the experiences and knowledge I’ve gained through the program to my CM coursework at MSU this upcoming year.
Here on the hard dollar side of Milford, the Bulding 31W Dyno Installation project is getting started. I’ve had the opportunity to sit in on the many meetings associated with this project. There are weekly owner coordination meetings similar to the Building 16 office renovation project I’ve been a part of. Additionally, this project has weekly scheduling meetings with the owner as well as weekly BIM design meetings with the owner, architectural firm, and our mechanical and electrical subcontractors. These will help strengthen my project presentation as my topic involves BIM and 3D modeling in the construction industry. I have been working on getting the Autodesk software installed on my laptop in hopes to view the BIM 360 model as well as walk through it during my presentation. There are many innovative solutions through the BIM model that are touched on throughout these weekly meetings. With the Dynamometers being such an intricate project in regard to the mechanical and electrical systems, the BIM 360 model really allows the project team to identify issues before the mistake is made in the field.
The Building 16 Office Renovation project I’ve been a part of is finishing up Phase 2 out of 3. I have been working to contact subcontractors and the necessary parties to finish closeout for this phase. The GM punchlist walk will be held at the end of the week. I’m eager to move to Phase 3 as I wasn’t a part of the demo and preparation stages of Phase 2.
On Wednesday, my fellow interns and I were fortunate enough to head down to St. Joe, Indiana for a tour of the Vulcraft steel joist, girder, and metal decking plant. Nucor is the parent company of Vulcraft and they have many operations going on throughout the United States. The tour was unlike anything I’ve seen. The welders in the assembly lines worked at an incredible pace. Their work is incentive based as we were told they are given a bonus in compensation depending on their production rate each day. I was surprised to see that there weren’t any machines/robots performing their work. It was noted that Vulcraft had tried a robotic manufacturing system in the past, but in the end had too many issues with it. I was also surprised to hear that Vulcraft has never laid any of their workers off. They said yes there was obviously less work during the economic recession, but when things picked back up, they had the skilled/loyal workers to produce ahead of their competitors. I want to thank Mark McCrindle for setting up the tour, it was a very unique and rare experience. Attached are a few photos from the trip:
Thank you everyone at Ideal Contracting for another great week.
