It seemed like a good idea at the time.

When Creighton University planned its $100-million health education building in Phoenix, the goal was to marry the Nebraska college’s clean, modern aesthetic with a rawer Southwest look. Crucial to this design goal was an entrance tower covered in 4-ft slabs of desert rock.

“We wanted a local flair on the building that was very much Arizona sandstone,” says architect Ken Miller of Phoenix-based Butler Design Group. But the team quickly found that the best stone—a peach-colored sandstone striped in orange that also had the lowest cost and quickest lead time—was in a quarry in Jaipur, India.

这项承诺是相当大的：在加利福尼亚州长滩港的六批货物中，有140吨石头，900件中的每一件都可以将板块滑入塔楼的外框架中。总承包商Okland Construction的高级项目经理Carlos Gonzalez说，当地的石梅森山谷要求根据预期的安装序列将某些物品包含在每个容器中。每件作品都被编号并保留在塔上的特定位置。

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring 2020.

米勒说：“该项目一开始就代表成本和日程安排了一个惊人的决定。”

他继续说：“这已经是一种脆弱的产品。”“无论如何很难发货。随着Covid和工厂的关闭，我们失去了许多安全因素，就可用的数量和更多采购能力而言。”

When the Indian quarry reopened with a skeleton crew, Okland began installing the stone’s anchoring system to prepare for it. To leave room for waterproofing, insulation and conduits, workers bolted 6-in.-long outriggers to the concrete tower, one every 4 ft, then attached aluminum rails to hold the stones. Workers then slid the 4-ft-high stones into the rails and locked them in place.

But another issue emerged: The product used to waterproof the tower beneath the stone could be exposed to ultraviolet light only for 60 days before its active ingredient began to degrade, Gonzalez says.

“We had to take that into account, and it became a waiting game—when would the stones arrive?”

Hard Choices

The first shipment of Indian sandstone for the Creighton tower arrived at the Port of Long Beach on Oct. 9, 2020. But due to pandemic disruptions and protocols, the trucks didn’t leave the port for about two weeks, Gonzalez says.

他说：“我们终于打开了板条箱，瞧瞧，有些石头破了，有些石头丢失了，其中一些石头不是我们所期望的。”

该货物是印度供应商决定的结果，该供应商试图在几乎不可能的条件下填写订单。当一块石头在生产过程中破裂时，供应商将整个订单都没有，而无需该件，以期在最后一货物中交付缺失的碎片。

冈萨雷斯说：“显然，如果您想以一定的顺序构建某些东西，那将行不通。”Okland与供应商合作验证缺失的内容，然后重新装修其施工序列以补偿。

随着越来越多的货物到来，团队将石头保留供以后使用，并立即安装。奥克兰（Okland）还采购了全石板，以使太阳谷（Sun Valley）手工切割并填补了空白。

Shipment delays continued throughout the project, says Susan Byram, vice president of design and construction for project developer Plaza Cos. A container shortage in December delayed the transports from India, while traffic jams at the port delayed unloading.

“所以我们在这里，只是为了这些石头而挨饿。他们在这里，他们实际上只是在等待海岸，我们不得不等待。”冈萨雷斯说。

尽管面临挑战，Okland，Sun Valley和其他团队仍符合该项目的原始时间表。最后一块石头运送到3月，工人在四月安装了最后一件。整个项目的建设始于2019年7月，Creighton将于4月底收到该建筑物，学生于6月参加第一堂课。

Teamwork by Design

Rising 113 ft at the entrance to the seven-story building, the pristine, delicately striated sandstone shows no sign of its long, fraught journey across the globe.

它的温暖色调抵消金属和玻璃表面of the 143,000-sq-ft structure built for 900 students in Creighton’s medical, nursing, pharmacy and other health science programs. The building’s design required close collaboration between Butler, which designed the core and shell, and interior architect RDG Planning & Design in Omaha.

“克莱顿读数已经做了很多工作想ty, so they brought the Creighton aesthetic and know-how,” says Butler’s Miller. “We have expertise in being efficient and bringing projects in under budget, and we have experience with Plaza and the Phoenix market.”

米勒说，两家设计公司都发现了破坏大学通常的结构外观的微妙方法，例如融合了裸露的混凝土柱和抛光的混凝土地板。RDG还用缝隙揭示了建筑物的内部结构和导管的间隙，抵消了建筑物通常的紧身天花板。

米勒说，尤其是柱子需要看起来有机。“我们想要您无法提前计划的快乐事故，因为混凝土是一种非常自然的材料，它是它自己的野兽。”

米勒说，在项目的价值工程阶段，一个决定节省了大量美元。该建筑的设计包括40,000平方英尺的玻璃，原始计划要求14英尺，8英寸高的窗帘。但是这些尺寸超出了玻璃制造商在其构建桌子上的适合。米勒说，通过将一些窗格的高度修剪为8英寸，球队可以以三分之一的成本获得玻璃杯。

紧密工作，但不太紧密

As the Creighton building began to rise out of the ground, the 3.3-acre site also hosted two other construction projects—a 10-story parking garage and a condo building—all sharing the same spaces and road access. During its busiest days, 600-700 workers swarmed the site, says Jon Stelzer, Plaza senior vice president.

Placing the concrete for decks could only be done during the day, since the pumps couldn’t be operated at night without disturbing nearby condo residents. “We could get only 15,000 sq ft a day at most,” Stelzer says.

Managing a large number of workers on a tight site was especially challenging during a pandemic. Okland and Plaza installed plexiglass on everything from custom-designed lunch tables to two-person “cherry picker” buckets. Every two-person job required additional thought: When two workers lifted a heavy object together using straps, a third person stood nearby and held a piece of plexiglass between them.

The team also contracted with a sanitization company to respond whenever a worker fell ill—even when that worker operated the project’s tower crane and cleaners had to climb 120 ft to sanitize the crane’s cab.

While every aspect of the project was conducted remotely when possible, some meetings simply had to be done in person, Gonzalez says. Using the job trailer wasn’t an option, so Okland and Plaza built a little auditorium on site, equipped with a PA system, loudspeakers, microphones, a projector screen and folding chairs to allow superintendents to meet with foremen.

“The constant message: ‘OK, guys, let’s go meet in that safe environment,’ trickled down to individual workers and helped everyone stay safe,” Gonzalez says.