THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 30, 1995 TAG: 9501280156
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, BUSINESS WEEKLY STAFF
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
Cruising down Reliance Drive in his white Toyota Landcruiser, Rod Rodriguez pointed to the field of knee-high brown grass.
``There's a long canal back there, so we couldn't build anything that goes deep,'' he said. ``That's why we had to buy the other plot of land.''
He steered around Reliance's cul-de-sac and waved toward a 22-acre expanse behind a row of trees.
``We could control where this street ends so it'll go right up to the warehouse,'' he said.
Rodriguez, president of Bay Mechanical Inc., a Virginia Beach mechanical contractor with $30 million in sales, has seen the future. And the future is high-tech.
On this 22-acre plot near the Lillian Vernon distribution plant, Rodriguez envisions a $3 million corporate complex to house his firm's future: prefabricated mechanical units.
That's right: prefab. Instead of sending a crew to swarm over a building site, cutting and welding and heaving pipe into position, Bay Mechanical will part with tradition. It'll cut and bend the pipe to shape in its new plant, then ship it to the building site.
In the tradition-bound world of construction, putting up and equipping what in essence is a factory is an expensive gambit even for a $30 million firm.
``We try to stay on the leading edge, which is always an advantage to being competitive,'' Rodriguez said. ``What the future of mechanical building is is prefab. You build everything in a shop. We eventually will be totally prefab.''
By using computers to build mechanical units on its own property instead of traveling to particular work sites, Bay Mechanical can eliminate some situations beyond its control: weather delays, unsupervised work crews, down time, labor shortages.
The Virginia Beach company can improve the quality of its systems by working in a controlled environment and monitoring its systems' quality with machines.
With more time spent building mechanical systems in-house, Bay can also lower labor costs. It will need fewer subcontractors to assemble and install heating or ventilation systems.
Bay Mechanical's proposed 160,000-square-foot facility, due to be started May 1, will house sophisticated automatic equipment that will replace human labor.
It will include sheet metal equipment - a sector of the industry already computerized - and a coil line. These things are already used in mechanical work, but they will include a more sophisticated computer system to orchestrate the process.
The coil line breaks and shapes the sheet metal along an assembly line, and adds glue inside. A pin spotter insulates the metal and rivets pins into it to hold it together. At the assembly line's end, a machine identifies the components with a tag, the date and the specific site it's made for.
``It's like the auto industry,'' Rodriguez said. ``Now it's all done by robots. You're taking 100 men off the line with only 10 men on the line and doing it with a lot of computerized equipment.''
After cutting pipes to specific sizes, Bay Mechanical will put the units on braces and truck the equipment to its destination.
Although several mechanical firms have used prefabrication in recent years, few have implemented technology like computer software, said Royden Goodson, president of Warwick Plumbing and Mechanical of Newport News, one of Bay's top local competitors.
``The whole industry is working in that direction,'' Goodson said. ``Everyone's headed to the point where you can control your working environment and plan a little better. You can make more money if you don't have free-lancers in the field.''
Some national firms like Dallas-based T.D. Mechanical, which built mechanical units for the 56-story NationsBank building in Charlotte, have implemented computerized prefabrication.
But few companies in the mid-Atlantic have gone to computerized prefabrication.
Several risks accompany pioneers who blaze a computerized prefab trail.
Even the best-laid plans may not fit the specifications or idiosyncracies of construction sites. Pipefitters may misjudge the distance between pipes or need additional piping to finish a project.
In addition, initial investment in a facility, a computer system, tools and welding machines can run up to half a million dollars, Goodson said.
Despite these challenges, Bay Mechanical's principals think they can pull it off.
``It's not hard to do; it's hard to get yourself computerwise to that point,'' Rodriguez said. ``We don't have to have the knowledge to do it. The people who build the equipment do that. We just need someone knowledgeable enough to use it. We already have people who can operate the computer on the line.''
``They're not scared to take a chance,'' said John Lawson, president of W.M. Jordan & Co., a Newport News construction firm that has worked with Bay Mechanical on projects like Nauticus.
Lawson called their management and company approach progressive.
``They're always tackling these large, complex projects people haven't tried before,'' he said. ``They seem to be confident they can pull it off.'' MEMO: Related stories on pages 11 and 16. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover
Virginia Beach contractor Bay Mechanical
Color photo by Motoya Nakamura, Staff
Bay Mechanical has been installing pipes in the Norfolk City Jail
Color photo by Beth Bergman, Staff
Rod Rodriquez, left, and his partner David Sparks run Bay Mechanical
Inc. of Virginia Beach
Color photo
The Carolina Panthers' stadium in Charlotte is among Bay
Mechanical's projects.
Color graphic with map
by CNB