ReadySet Helps Construction Manager Meet Tight Deadline
Cleveland Chiropractic College recently relocated from Kansas City, Missouri to a new 34-acre campus in Overland Park, Kansas. As part of the relocation, the school needed to quickly remodel a 120,000 square foot building to accommodate the needs of students and faculty. The Konrath Group was given a six month turnaround to convert the building into an academic center.
The short end date for the project necessitated strategic actions to adhere to the timelines set forth in the construction plan. This meant devising ways to slash construction procedures that are time consuming and prone to mishaps. The installation of doors and hardware, for example, tends to be one of the more labor intensive jobs in the construction process. Konrath chose to streamline this step by using the ReadySet System from Assa Abloy.
ReadySet
ReadySet openings are assembled beforehand, available prefinished and quickly fit into place when delivered to the job site. All opening components - hollow metal doors, wood doors and mechanical/electromechanical hardware, including locks, exit devices, door closers, hinges and door controls - are assembled beforehand and can be installed at the job site in minutes.
"We were planning how to implement the door and hardware portion of the project when Steve King from product distributor Topeka Foundry told us about ReadySet," said Doug McCune, Job Superintendent for the Konrath Group. "The quick installation features of ReadySet seemed like it would speed along the construction process, so we decided to give it a try."
Design Options
ReadySet doorways were used on approximately 350 openings and featured a mix and match of products from ASSA ABLOY Group brands, including, CURRIES steel doors, GRAHAM wood doors, SARGENT locks, exit devices and door closers and McKINNEY hinges. The broad choice of products allowed the school nearly unlimited design freedom.
The school wanted to take extra steps to protect building occupants so they decided to include a number of safety features when the doorways were ordered, including classroom security locksets that are designed to quickly and easily secure classrooms from hallway activities.
A number of openings were also equipped with electrified hardware that tied into a card reader system. Since the electrified hardware was preinstalled, there was no need to drill raceways into the wood doors which is not only tricky when done in the field, but can also create code violations if the doors are fire rated. McKINNEY QC ElectroLynx hinges bridged the wiring system from the door to the frame.
An executive office suite for the school administrators was outfitted with GRAHAM dark red finished maple wood doors, McKINNEY three knuckle hinges and, for additional decorative flare, SARGENT Metro Elements designer levers in satin nickel US15D finish. The majority of the remaining openings throughout the facility were done with GRAHAM plain-sliced white maple wood doors in clear finish and hardware in 26D satin chrome plated finish.
"ReadySet was slick," King noted, offering a distributor's point of view. "The installer was already behind the 8-ball because of the short timeline and additional hurdles that were created when the school made a number of last minute changes. But. with ReadySet, we were able to meet their design needs and still have the project completed on time. It was just about flawless."
Easy Installation
The doorways were scheduled to be delivered after much of the interior construction work was finished, thus eliminating the possibility of job site damage. McCune then set up a team of five workers to go about installing all 350 doorways. Two workers carried the assembly to the appropriate doorway. They were followed by two additional workers that positioned and roughly fastened the door to the frame. A single person followed behind to complete the installation and perform any fine tune adjustments. Following this routine enabled the five-man team to install at least 60 doors each day.
"IT was a seamless operation," McCune said of the ReadySet installation. "We had no problems, even with the trickier applications that had special locking devices. Having the doorways delivered as a complete assemble saves so much time and makes coordination simple."
With traditional doorway installation, the individual components are delivered to each opening where they are removed from their packaging, assembled together and then installed to the frame. Finally, the doorway is tested to ensure the components were correctly installed and the opening functions as intended. ReadySet unites, on the other hand, are shipped on special pallets to protect the product. All related hardware and accessories are installed and checked for functionality prior to shipment.
"This was much better than receiving separate hardware shipments and then redistributing the packages to each door," McCune explained. "The doors were prefinished and none were damaged in the process. The final clean up was easy since there was very little packaging that needed to be thrown away."
McCune said ReadySet helped the Konrath Group meet the tight construction deadline request by Cleveland Chiropractic College. "I would highly recommend ReadySet," he commented. "The product worked great and we are very happy with the results."
For more information on ReadySet, contact your local ASSA ABLOY Door Security Solutions team or visit www.assaabloydss.com.