A new interdisciplinary complex at Orange Coast Community College in Costa Mesa, Calif., will be an architecturally significant addition to the growing campus when it is complete in the summer of 2015. Sundt will begin construction of the first phase of the project this August using the Construction Manager Multiple Prime delivery method.
The three-story, 75,000-square-foot facility will house offices, classrooms and computer labs for the math and business departments. Its exterior will consist of exposed structural steel, a glass curtain wall system, metal panels, plaster, and exposed cast-in-place concrete. Inside, there will be several areas of architectural-quality exposed concrete including a circular cast-in-place concrete element that will surround a new computer laboratory and an elliptical-shaped, cast-in-place concrete area to house lecture rooms. The project designer is LPA Architects.
“The design is beautiful and very complex to implement,” said Sundt Project Manager Pam Hermosillo. “The building enclosure requires the success of multiple trades working together, and a lot of coordination, which can be challenging with this particular delivery method.”
To meet that challenge, Sundt and Coast Community College District have published project-specific pre-qualification requirements that include similar project experience as well as financial strength. The process mirrors Sundt’s own pre-qualification process.
“In order to ensure the success of this project, our strategy is to invest a lot of time and effort into the screening and selection process so that we get high-quality contractors that are a right fit for this project,” Hermosillo added.
The $42 million community college construction project is Sundt’s first for the Coast Community College District.