North Star Sheets Sees the Value of Fully-Integrated Design-Build

4/14/2021
To us value means delivering superior craftsmanship along with your requirements for function, aesthetics, cost and time. Our design, engineering and construction expertise delivers ultimate value. Inspired by your goals, and understanding your timeline and budget, we're ready to apply our diverse experience and deliver your vision.

Project after project, we have proven the benefits of our method, delivering innovative and efficient buildings of any size on time and on budget. Working as a fully-integrated, in-house team, we establish a guaranteed maximum price earlier than other models. And we meet aggressive schedules without shortcutting or compromising the full design process. We deliver high-quality buildings with enduring value.

We have proven that we can meet the aggressive schedules that can be crucial to clients.

North Star Sheets (NSS) had an urgent need for a new facility with rail spur access. They reached out around January 1; come late July, they had millions of dollars of equipment being delivered. Storing the equipment until they could put it into production wouldn't be the most prudent financial move; they needed to put it into production to create value. With the shovel-ready site in-hand at Southeast Industrial Park in Cottage Grove, Minn.​, we completed design and construction of the new facility within the required short timeline.

Our model has the unique ability to influence cost and create value. We delivered the 161,000-square-foot building by the end of August – just 8 months after NSS first contacted us about the project.

Here are some key points of success: 

  • Speed was most important for NSS. The quicker we delivered the building, the quicker NSS created new revenue. We exceeded their expectations, delivering on time with cost savings.

  • We eased their past burden of having to coordinate all connections for their equipment. Our collaborative team delivered value, helping to solve complex coordination issues with the foundations, mechanical, electrical and plumbing needed to put their equipment into production.

  • With a network of quality MEP subs and our diverse knowledge, we solved issues and handled all MEP coordination. We updated and simplified their typical MEP distribution system without decreasing performance. The result is both lower initial and operational costs.

  • In the past, NSS had to hire consultants from the East Coast to prepare the space for their equipment, requiring considerable coordination, communication and cost. We used the hands-on expertise of our in-house structural engineers and field construction experts to complete the design and construction of the complex deep trenches and foundations. This simplified the process and reduced the cost.

  • NSS uses heavy forklifts to carry 10,000-pound paper rolls. This weight is hard on concrete slabs, especially at the joints. NSS had been spending thousands of dollars annually on slab maintenance and in some instances had to replace large areas of slab just five to 10 years into their life cycle. We worked with our structural team and local concrete engineers to develop a solution: a helix reinforced concrete slab with 80 foot on-center joint spacing to limit the amount of possible slab crack locations. After three years in operation, the slabs perform better than their other buildings.

  • In the past, NSS had worked with contractors who delivered buildings with low initial construction costs but considerable long-term maintenance and repair costs. We showed them that a quality building designed and built with experience and foresight has both immediate and long-term value.

  • NSS considers this project to be one of the best out of the dozens of projects they have completed across the country in the last 30 years. They now compare their other buildings to this one.