Stenographer's Transcript of Video
Case Title: Three Palms Point Success Story
Part Eleven: Detailed Project Description by General Contractor
Transcribed by: Stenoproof

My name is Dave Miller. I'm Vice President and Principal of Wilson & Keyhoe Corporation in Largo, Florida. We're state certified general contractors specializing in concrete repair, waterproofing and painting. Our company was founded approximately 26 years ago.

We were hired by the Three Palms Point Condominium Association to perform stucco wall system restoration and reconstruction. The project commenced during the first week of July in 2001 and reached substantial completion during the third week of November of 2001.

The project manual for the pilot units laid out the events of construction rather clearly. The first event which needed to occur was rather dramatic, and that required that the unit owners vacate their units and establish residency elsewhere during the construction. After that, we hired a professional moving company to come in and to box the goods and the personal belongings of the unit owners. Initially we had all the materials and belongings stored inside the apartments, which proved to be a mistake. There no longer was enough room to perform the construction services, and frankly we incurred significant damages to personal belongings for people just because they were right in the way of construction. We later learned that the materials and belongings should be stored offsite by the moving company, which is what we eventually went to.

After the goods were either removed or stored in the unit, a partition wall was constructed several feet inside of the exterior walls, and that partition wall would serve to reduce the dust mitigation -- migration into the units. It would also serve to protect the inside of the units from water once the exterior walls were removed. The walls were constructed and then the drywall needed to be removed; however, early in the project, or before we commenced the project, actually, we determined that asbestos was present in both the drywall and the stucco in the exterior of the building. Therefore, the drywall removal needed to be conducted by an asbestos-certified company, and clean air tests and documentation needed to be produced to have that event occur.

Once the asbestos company removed the drywall, the wall studs were inspected by all the parties that needed to see their condition. Then the exterior veneer, the stucco, which also contained asbestos, could be removed. That also had to be done in the asbestos environment, with clean air certifications provided. At that point in time, the wall systems -- existing wall systems could be completely removed and we could begin reconstructing the walls as per the project manual.

The project manual outlined the framing details, which were 14-gauge metal studs, sheathing -- structural sheathing, lathe and a stucco system, we've installed new windows, and we also put in a number of flashing details which would be control water penetration into that wall system.

Early in the project we explored ways to be able to save sections of the wall system and, maybe, do our work while leaving certain elements in place of the existing wall system. That did not prove to be a wise move for a number of reasons, one of which was the fact that the quality of our work would be severely compromised by having old and new systems having to butt together and perform monolithically. It wasn't going to work and manufacturers would not support that idea either.

The other fact was that in fact, it would end up costing more to work around certain sections of wall that you would save. The way we eventually did things was just as the project manual outlined, which was column to column and slab to slab. It proved to be the best choice.

I think in a nutshell that the primary challenge for my company here was that this was construction work at its fullest extent, but it needed to be conducted in a home. This is not a construction site and will never be a construction site; it's where people live, and the intimacy of the client contact and the emotional nature of this work made it a very, very challenging project.

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