Page 20 - Urban Construction Project Management

Introduction xix
water with sufficient hydrostatic pressure above six building stories and sanitary sys-
tems to remove waste products made the skyscraper a viable working building. With
harnessing the power of steam to power derricks for lifting heavy objects, and the
fireproofing of steel to protect the steel structures, the skyscraper became a very com-
petitive building type. This was especially true when land prices started to escalate
and six-story structures were no longer financially viable. The use of high-strength
concrete, metal decking, electrical raceways, curtain walls for the building envelope,
new life-saving systems, and sophisticated elevator systems have all assisted with the
evolution of a safe and quickly constructed skyscraper in the urban environment. All
of these inventions have allowed humans to go from occupying a primitive cave to
the pyramids to the Eiffel Tower, the first high-rise buildings in New York and
Chicago, such as the Woolworth Building and the MetLife Building, to the modern
high-rise skyscraper. The first high-rise building in Chicago started the evolution of
commercial office buildings as we know them today. Buildings that were tall and
slender; had core support space for elevator shafts; and had mechanical, electrical,
and telecommunications systems, windows, staircases, and bathrooms become feasi-
ble and the size and sky were the limit. Since the beginning of time, humans have
never been satisfied with the status quo, so we are seeking higher and more techno-
logical complex structures to satisfy our demand for quality space to live and work in
the changing world.

CONSTRUCTION TODAY

Many buildings and construction techniques that we use today have not changed
much since Egyptian times. The construction process still uses raw materials of vary-
ing sorts that are now available from around the world with the ease of transportation
and shipping, but it still requires an extensive amount of labor to manufacture and
erect the materials and deliver a finished building. We have introduced cast iron and
then steel into the structural framework of buildings, elevators and escalators for ver-
tical transportation, piles and excavation to bedrock to allow for construction of taller
structures, non-load-bearing curtain walls made of stone, concrete, metal, glass, and
bricks to enclose a building with an attractive façade, pumps to deliver water to
higher elevations in a building, and life safety systems to make the buildings safer for
the occupants.

The construction industry has evolved from small- to medium-sized GCs who perform
all aspects of construction on a project including demolition, excavation, foundations,
structures, electrical, plumbing, and finishes to a very specialized construction industry
of today, where the CMs and GCs have become overall managers of the construction
process and broker out the work to specialized subcontractors, who perform their
unique construction work on the project. Most CMs and GCs today only perform the
overall project management, project oversight, protection, clean up, and general condi-
tions (see Chapter 1) type of support work for the overall project, while each trade per-
forms its specialized work. The CM and GC of today has become the “broker of the
construction process.”