Taking Teamwork To New Heights
Collaboration fills a tall order

When construction is completed in 2001, Hae Song Plaza will be the tallest building in Inch’on, South Korea. At 40 stories and three million square feet (278,700 m2), the office/hotel/retail complex is also one of the largest construction projects in the world. “An international project of this magnitude usually would go through several years of negotiating and planning,” said Kyun Kim, project director and client liaison (San Francisco). “But within 90 days of our first conversation with the chairman of Hae Song Limited, we started work on concept studies for this project.”

Hae Song Limited awarded Ellerbe Becket the office and retail complex in February 1996. By June negotiations concluded, and programming and master planning began.

The project presented clear challenges—geographically, structurally and logistically. Hae Song Plaza is located about 25 miles (40 km) west of Seoul, outside the historical center of Inch’on, in an area that was filled with storage yards and shipping stations. Besides considering Korea’s current experimentation with architecture and technologies, designers had to anticipate the urban landscape’s development and blend their design with the natural beauty of nearby Inch’on Harbor. “It challenged our firm to design a worldclass complex that would become a city icon,” said Michael D. Jones, overall design principal (Washington, D.C.).

Hae Song Plaza comprises an office building, 550-room, five-star hotel, department store, shopping center and 2,700-car underground garage. The total project size is about 278,000 square meters—more than three million square feet. “Early on it became apparent that the project was too large for any single team in the organization,” said Jones.

For one firm to provide effective design as well as project and construction management would be an intricate task, even without the additional hurdles of distances between offices, varying time zones and differing languages. But strong interoffice collaboration and the right people with the right expertise can fill a tall order.

Rounding up the best people
Jones had just relocated from New York to Ellerbe Becket’s Washington, D.C., office and was building a staff while starting up the Hae Song Plaza project. Although he knew one office couldn’t provide the vast experience needed, a combination of locations might offer the architectural, engineering and construction services knowledge necessary to get the project off the ground. “It was our desire to take advantage of Ellerbe Becket’s multidisciplinary approach,” Jones explained.

The trick was to identify personnel, regardless of their locations, with the appropriate expertise for the project. It took six months to gather all of the people from all of the disciplines and offices who would guide the project to success. For example, high-rise design, curtain wall systems and master planning came from Washington, D.C. Kansas City, Mo., furnished knowledge about major project delivery and large team management. Retail design resided in San Francisco. And Minneapolis supplied lighting design and construction management. “About 10 percent of the entire company had a role in Hae Song Plaza,” said Barry Huhn, overall project architect (Kansas City). “Each person from every location was an invaluable member of the team.”

At the beginning, Kim and Jones built the team around several key requirements. Structural engineering, for example, was one of the biggest considerations. Deep, waterproof foundations were necessary to hold back the water table. And the slender office building’s frame needed bracing to withstand hurricane-force winds. Because the project required two engineers that had built work of at least 40 stories in height, H.B. Warner (Kansas City) and Ramesh Desai (Washington, D.C.) joined the team.

To coordinate the process and the people involved, strong project leadership was critical. Hae Song’s overall project director had to have experience with built work in excess of US $100 million in construction costs. Due to his solid experience with large projects, developer clients and commercial office buildings, Doug Smith (Kansas City) came on board the growing team. “Doug’s presence in the Kansas City office complemented the selection of H.B. as one of the structural engineers,” explained Jones. “It provided a platform for locating part of the project in Kansas City.”

Shore-to-shore collaboration
Early on the team decided to split up the architectural work by its major components—office building, hotel, atrium and retail. Strategically, said Jones, it made sense to put the office building work in Washington, D.C., given that location’s recent experience with office buildings and mid-rise towers. Senior designer David Rova had recently completed design work on the 39-story Karet Office Tower in Jakarta and on the glass curtain wall for the New York Psychiatric Institute. In addition, the office led master planning, programming and schematic design, and performed all mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering design.

The team put the hotel work in the good hands of Kansas City’s architecture and interiors staff. The office collaborated with Washington, D.C., for the schematic design process as well.

At the start of the design development phase the San Francisco office came on board to handle design of the department store, shopping center and seven-story atrium.

Jones directed the master planning effort of the core team, with Huhn providing assistance from the Kansas City office. “I was doing a lot of commuting back and forth to Washington,” Huhn said.

With his previous experience on mixed-use facilities and projects in Asia, Huhn became indispensable to the Hae Song Plaza team, said Jones. Besides being project architect for the garage and site, Huhn established himself as the clearinghouse for all information flowing between team members in the various offices as well as between Ellerbe Becket and the client.

Each office had its own management and team for its portion of the work. The three primary office leaders were Rova in Washington, D.C., Sandra Beck in San Francisco, and Huhn in Kansas City. As overall project director, Smith determined team organization, contract administration, individual responsibilities, scheduling, due dates, deliverables and the use of technology. “Doug very clearly defined virtually every aspect of the project and gave very clear direction to the team,” said Jones.

Logistics—the key to success
The architects, engineers, interior designers and countless others couldn’t have maintained organization of the Hae Song Plaza project without constant communication. Roger Claar, senior project architect (Kansas City), along with Smith, Rova, Kim and Huhn set the work plan, then held regular team meetings to monitor progress. “We were continually updating the work plan,” said Huhn. The spreadsheet format tracked tasks, assignments and deliverables for everyone involved. Project office leaders divided planning into stages that coincided with client presentations, held about every six weeks. They revisited project plan elements at these times.

Differing time zones complicated communication with clients in Korea, but the team worked around it. “The fact that they are a half-day ahead of us allowed us to send them questions at the end of the day and receive answers by the next morning,” said Jones. They transmitted drawings, memos, correspondence and other project communications by fax, Lotus Notes<™) and express mail.

Having many locations involved made clear, timely, interoffice communication a necessity. Drawings and images were transmitted between offices via the wide area network or fax. The team also used video conferencing to view drawings and review interoffice issues.

About every three weeks everyone attended an in-house meeting in Washington, D.C., Kansas City or San Francisco to review overall issues. “The pace of meetings was often grueling, but it was necessary to keep the project moving forward on schedule,” said Jones. The meeting locations were determined based on 1) which elements of the project needed the most attention at the time; 2) a desire to include all team members in the process; and 3) which locations would logistically keep the least number of people away from critical tasks they needed to be working on in their own offices.

Kim, who acted as client liaison, said Hae Song Limited’s main concern was not where the work was done, but that it was completed and high quality. The team held meetings with clients every six to eight weeks in Washington, D.C., San Francisco or New York, and gave a few major presentations in Seoul. Between regularly scheduled meetings, Jones, Smith, the lead engineers and others made trips as needed. “It seemed like Doug Smith and I were on airplanes all of the time,” Jones said.

Clear organization and information ensured a smooth transfer of the project to local Korean architects and engineers after the design development phase. The Ellerbe Becket team handed over the entire project file in electronic format—including drawings, notes, specifications, calculations and cost estimate data—to their Korean counterparts.

Working together through technology
Software created three-dimensional models that enabled the team to do in-depth analysis of design plans and options. Realistic imagery helped explain concepts to the Korean client by simulating the experience of walking through spaces.

Computer-aided design (CAD) experts including Bryce LaMar (Kansas City) and architect Kurt Amundsen (Kansas City) resolved production issues. The team charged Amundsen with ensuring that project drawings were checked into the electronic library every day, formatted properly, and used the right structural grid. “This was an all-consuming job in itself,” said Jones, though Amundsen also was responsible for parts of the design and production work.

After coordinating interoffice standards for formatting, numbering and setting up CAD files, Amundsen and LaMar documented, distributed and “policed” the processes. “Setting and following strict CAD file management guidelines is absolutely critical to a project of this complexity,” said Doug Smith. “One layering mistake in a drawing can mess up 20 drawings where it’s referenced.” Despite the complexity and somewhat experimental nature of the work process, Smith said, “The team really pulled together and overcame some amazing obstacles to make the process work.”

When San Francisco came on board and the project was better defined, the interoffice team had to carefully delineate which drawings would be done where, and then set clear match lines to which the project pieces would be aligned. “Working around these match lines was a major coordination issue up to the end of the process,” said Jones. Each office generally produced its own package of drawings and coordinated the structural and mechanical/electrical/plumbing components within it.

The team established a standard directory setup that all offices used. Because it slowed the system to have all offices access CAD files from one server, Information Systems in Minneapolis copied all of the plan information from each office every night, so that every day each discipline could reference up-to-date project information. Once a week, all files were copied so that each office’s computer drive contained identical information.

The team also set up a common directory in which to work on specifications. Kansas City performed the final edit and published the combined work. “Although it was slow, it was tolerable, and avoided the problem of having multiple versions of the same document out there with no idea of which one contained all the latest comments,” explained Huhn.

Technologically the process wasn’t always smooth, admitted Jones. “There was a firmwide CAD upgrade going on and, as a result, we had to learn a new system at the same time that we were trying to figure out how to work together at a distance.”

Cooperative learning
The process of coordination, design and management created a facility destined to become a distinguished Inch’on landmark, according to those involved. But the project was not without challenges in cooperation, especially since many of the team members hadn’t worked with each other before Hae Song Plaza. “It took a while for each of us to become more comfortable with one another,” said Jones.

Huhn agreed, “In the beginning of the project, we didn’t know each other.” He said they resolved the wariness some people felt by defining roles and responsibilities, working together closely and holding numerous coordination charrettes. “Most important,” Huhn said, “were the open communications, like copying everybody on all correspondence. We found on occasion that an issue affected a discipline when it hadn’t even occurred to us that they’d have an interest in the subject. It disproved the idea that there would be too much paper floating around.”

Kim attributes much of the project’s success to a combination of an enthusiastic client, creative design and effective management between Ellerbe Becket offices. “In the 35 years of my career, I have not experienced a project that proceeded this smoothly,” said Kim.

One firm, many people, one process
A century ago Hae Song Plaza would have come together with an altogether different work process—minus the e-mail, video conferencing and 3-D software.

But not everything has changed. Just like the master builder who served as architect, engineer and builder, the integrated approach brought many people together in one firm that assumed responsibility for every project aspect. Hae Song Plaza is the result of a comprehensive team of architects, engineers, construction services personnel and other professionals that understood and structured itself to meet the owner’s needs. For Hae Song Ltd., integrated services meant cost effectiveness and one contract. For the team, responsibilities and communication were clear. Everyone was focused under a single leadership structure, with one set of goals throughout the project.

The project’s success illustrates the importance of bringing in the right people at the right time—before the design is complete. “We had a very strong and dedicated team on the Hae Song Plaza project,” said Michael D. Jones, design principal. “They worked together very well and, at the end, accomplished more than we ever thought possible in a very short amount of time.”

The team achieved the owner’s specific objectives by inviting participation and open communication. Jones said the clients generally knew what they wanted and made decisions on time, which contributed to the project’s success. “We had a very demanding, but very good client with a very good eye, who insisted on top-quality design,” said Jones. “The extremely dedicated and directed client team actively sought our advice on issues.”

Update on developments
Ellerbe Becket continues to manage the construction process, which is being completed by a local associate with knowledge of Korean building codes and materials procurement. Hae Song Plaza’s structural team developed a system for “top-down construction”; after the perimeter foundation walls and grade-level working slab are completed, construction occurs simultaneously above and below ground—saving money and time. In the case of Hae Song Plaza, completion will be a year earlier than is typical for high-rise projects.

Hilton Hotels recently signed on with Hae Song Plaza, and Ellerbe Becket currently is working with the new tenant on the design of the hotel component to ensure their requirements are accommodated.

Nearby, construction is underway on a new airport. The airport will handle international flights, making Inch’on another port of entry into South Korea. The first flights are scheduled to land in 2002; the entire complex is slated to be completed in 2012. Hae Song Plaza is approximately five kilometers (three miles) from the airport and will be on a direct route for passengers leaving the island for Seoul.

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