1209 York Road

Job Facts
Tons of steel: 217 tons
Contractor: Prosser Steel
Project Manager: Chuck Pearson
Sub Contractor: B&B Welding Company, Inc.
Erector: LR Willson & Sons

At B&B Welding, our steel fabrication shop may be home to some of the Baltimore region’s most sophisticated CNC machinery, but a lot of what we do best takes place out in the field. Once on the job, our guys help prepare the site, assemble the pieces, and even help erect the structure. Often, we act as go-betweens among the different parties, brainstorming on-the-fly solutions and mediating disputes of all sorts

So it went with the new medical office building on 1209 York Road in Baltimore County. Our job was to fabricate 217 tons of steel beams and columns and help in its erection. However, after the foundation work had been completed and the structural beams set in place, the subcontractor, Prosser Steel, made an alarming discovery: the anchor rods were off not just by a hair — AISC standards allow a quarter inch of movement — but were off by several inches. To make matters worse, the new building’s lead tenant, the Katzen Eye Group, faced a tight deadline: their former lease was up and the new office space had to be completed for their business to resume in its new location.

Prosser Steel was in a bind. That’s when B&B stepped in. “If a surveyor doesn’t lay out the site correctly, or if a contractor incorrectly sets the anchor rods, we often end up being the traffic cop,” says B&B’s, Dennis McCartney. “We impressed upon Prosser Steel’s owner that he needed an anchor rod survey,” says Dennis. “And you can bet that from hereafter, he’ll always insist on one.”

In accordance with AISC practices, B&B strongly recommends anchor rod surveys on all their jobs. And we do so not just because the AISC requires it; we do so because improper anchor rod locations are a major cause of assembly setbacks during steel erection. Improperly placed anchor rods translate into costly delays, change orders, and grief and aggravation. Ultimately, verifying the anchor rod positions is the smart way to build. And at B&B, we’re all about building smarter.

But back at the job site of 1209 York Road, what was a relatively straightforward job — a rectilinear, beam and column office building — had turned into something unnecessarily complicated. After completing the anchor rod survey, three columns were found to be misaligned and were torn out. Bad news for sure. But just imagine what would have happened if the survey had never been conducted? At each phase of construction, all work would have come to a screeching halt. Workers would have idled. Tempers would have flared. And worse, the delays would have scrapped the owner’s move-in deadline.

Our guys in the field didn’t stop with the anchor survey. We studied the job’s blueprints and pinpointed a section of screen wall up on the roof. As drawn, the screen wall called for some considerable — and costly — field welding. We knew there had to be a better way. So we took the drawings and created a new model that eliminated virtually all of the field welding. “We saved Prosser Steel roughly $6,500 just on that change to the screen wall,” says Dennis. No wonder Prosser has asked B&B to bid on many of their subsequent projects.

In the end, this job proved a lesson in the benefits of quality control. But the job proved something else. While most contractors think of their steel fabricators as costly drags on their bottom line, our clients have come to regard us as cost savers. Our clients have come to appreciate our people not only for the value we add to pieces of steel but also for the value we add to the job site.