Stenographer's Transcript of Video
Case Title: Three Palms Point Success Story
Part Two: Kerns, Whitehouse & Associates
Transcribed by: Stenoproof

Yes, I'm Roy Kerns. I'm the principal of Kerns-Whitehouse & Associates. Kerns-Whitehouse & Associates, KWA, is a Tampa Bay structural engineering consulting firm. About 70 percent of our work is restoration and waterproofing work on buildings, such as Three Palms Point. The other 30 percent probably mainly involves new building designs. The type of buildings at Three Palms, we design these type of buildings, as far as structurally, new. We were originally asked to come in - KWA was asked to come in and analyze the overall situation at Three Palms Point to determine what the problems were and how to approach repairing the problems on a smaller scale, such as a pilot project, and we selected 12 units to do this.

We selected the 12 units because we felt that they were a representative sample for the whole total 199 units in the building and the other exterior wall areas. We basically selected them on both sides of the building, waterside, landside throughout the 13-floor area - units of the - throughout the 13 floors of the building. Basically we wanted to find out a large enough sample that would be statistically relevant but not so large that we were going to repair too much of the building, just to get an idea of what the cost would be.

Kerns-Whitehouse put together a document, a project manual for the 12 units, repairing these 12 units. For cost control, quality work and timeliness, a project manual is a very good approach. The project manual has bid documents, plan specifications, and all other relevant technical and bid-type documents that are needed. And this document, project manual, can be used and was used to procure bids at a competitive situation from qualified general contractors.

The selected low-bid contractor in this case was asked to go in with supervision by both the engineering firm, Kerns-Whitehouse, and the insurance company, State Farm's agents present. The interior wall surfaces - the drywall was removed from the perimeter walls, the exterior perimeter walls so the steel studs could be viewed to determine where the damages were.

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