For a job with a maximum guaranteed price, crews working on a large expansion at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, were looking for the best ways to cut costs when things went over budget. Putting additional Viega products to use was an easy way to trim costs.
Golden Triangle Construction, along with contractor Braconier Mechanical and Plumbing, remodeled the existing 15,000-square-foot welding building at the college, plus added on another three-story building, 60,000 feet in size. Original specs called for threading the pipe, and Project Manager Todd Self saw that as an opening for Viega MegaPress.
“When it was over budget, I looked at what we could substitute. Originally the only [Viega product] called for was potable water, but we got other Viega items in. It was value engineering with the budget,” Self said. Braconier purchased two sets of MegaPress jaws for the project.
Ricky Maynard, the plumbing foreman on the job, echoed that Viega was the best way to go for both ProPress and MegaPress.
“It’s faster because no hot work permits are needed. And running the water pipe in a three- story building, we would have needed two or three times as long to do it,” he said. “I’ve been pressing since I came to Braconier six years ago, and if the specs allow it, [Viega] is what we do.”
Time saved adds up, and it was crucial to the budget. Maynard also added that original plans in the building called for threading oxygen pipe, which wouldn’t have worked. Lines can’t be used for oxygen if they’ve had threading oil on them – yet another reason to call on Viega.
“Viega evens the playing field for us,” Self said. “We can drop our labor costs and be more competitive. Labor savings are huge, so we do what we can to decrease them. When I started [with Braconier] four and a half years ago, I always pushed for ProPress and the labor savings it brings. The prep time to press versus weld a joint is so much less.”
Dan Guidry, pipe fitter foreman for Braconier, said that with so many workers constantly flowing through the building, at times some of his pipe was pushed around or shuffled out of the way. Still, there was not a single failure on any Viega fitting, a testament to the strength of the system.
ProPress lines run throughout
the newly revamped building for hot and cold domestic water. In
the remodeled welding lab, MegaPress and MegaPressG lines run a variety of
things, including natural gas, compressed air and welding gases, such as argon
and acetylene.
The original welding lab, built in 1983, was gutted to a shell with just the welding booths remaining. All the piping – nearly 5,000 feet of it – was newly run, and Joe Turecek, Superintendent with Golden Triangle Construction, said he believes pressing with Viega cut at least a week off the install time in the lab alone.
The addition to the building is a huge boost for the Aims campus and, with all the offerings available, will bring in lots of new students. Students can study construction management, CAD, materials testing, robotics, 3D printing, alternative energy and more. The entire building is meant to be a teaching vehicle. For example, the back of the elevator is exposed so that students can see all the working elements that make it run. There are lots of exposed pipes throughout the building to serve as examples of top-notch workmanship to which students can aspire.
