Bruce Oakley, Inc. is a distribution, transportation, and commodity trading company based on the north shore of the Arkansas River in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The business was started in 1968 with a single truck and now includes a fleet of approximately 850 trucks that service the continental US, numerous barges, and several river ports that service the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers. Prior to this project, the company utilized a headquarters building that they took possession of back in the early 1970’s and kept adding on as the company grew. About five (years ago, Dennis Oakley decided that the company had grown enough to deserve a larger, and newer headquarters building. Fennell Purifoy was hired as the architect and an initial design was done and bid out; however, the project was put on hold, and it was not until three years later that Kinco had the opportunity to interview and be chosen as the construction manager/general contractor to assist in bringing Dennis Oakley’s dream of a beautiful, new headquarters building to fruition. Kinco and Fennell Purifoy Architect’s joined forces in the preconstruction phase modifying the original design and working through several cost-saving options (One was the type of fence around the parking lot, another was the type of countertops used throughout the building.) that won the approval of Dennis and his staff and eventually led to the GMP being established.
Several challenges occurred during construction that required very diligent CMGC/Owner communication and cooperation. First, shortly after we began clearing & grubbing and earthwork operations, the flood of June 2019 arrived. Fortunately for us, the design elevation of the building site was about 2.5’ above base flood elevation and the floodwaters actually reached about 3.5’ below our building site. Thus, the site itself was not damaged. However, the surrounding areas had been inundated by water, so access was cut-off. This caused a one-month delay to our original construction schedule. Furthermore, the next challenge was the discovery that North Little Rock Wastewater (NLRWW) has an arterial 54” RCP sewer line that was installed in 1965. It had been weakened by sewer gases over the years and it carries effluent from 1/3 of the residents and businesses in North Little Rock. The main is buried under 30’ of fill and was located a little over 50’ to the south of the proposed building. This meant that in the event that either the line blew-out or NLRWW needed access to the line, the new building would be undermined and fall into the trench of the sewer line. Therefore, a joint effort of the geotechnical engineer, architect, structural engineer, and Kinco was undertaken to design a system that could maintain the integrity and functionality of the building during such a catastrophic event. The ingenuity that came out of several meetings and long hours of thought was a sea wall to limit the extent of slope failure beneath the building, and a cantilevered bridge section that sat on top of and extended out from the sea wall that could support the Southernmost 12.5’ of the building. This will allow the building to float above the exposed trench and pipe if there was ever an issue.
Utilization of Building Information Modeling (BIM) was crucial at the start of the project, providing the opportunity to do clash detection during the coordination of the myriad ductwork, conduit, and basket tray that zig-zagged throughout the building both inside and below grade. Identifying and correcting conflicts using BIM saved the team hundreds of labor hours during installation. The Kinco team also used Procore, which provided quality control through logging of daily reports, inspections, tracking of quality issues, and access to the latest revisions of all drawings, specs, and submittals for the project. Lastly, the major key to success regarding keeping the project on track was employing the methods of LEAN scheduling. The schedule was updated by subcontractors at the weekly subcontractors meeting, which allowed all participants to track their own progress and to see how all the trades could interact and perform most effectively and efficiently.
Kinco was proud to perform the headquarters project for Bruce Oakley, Inc. The project teams from Kinco and Oakley have developed, not only a partnership, but also a friendship that developed into Kinco performing not just one, but two other projects at the same campus while the headquarters was being built. Kinco looks forward to a long-lasting relationship with the Oakley group.
