Aldridge’s VDC team is made up of modeling staff skilled in CAD and BIM. They work with the project and prefab teams to model and design the projects, creating design and spool drawings to assist with the prefab process and installation in the field. Aldridge was recently promoted in an article inside ECMAG written by Susan DeGrane. There she writes about our prefabrication process and how it is such an asset to our work.
“Inside one of three prefabrication workshops at Aldridge Electric Inc.’s 15-acre Libertyville, Ill., campus, Tim Farro drills holes in a steel beam that will support an electrical power assembly for a fuel tank farm project. He’s surrounded by other prefab projects, including power feeds and foundations for parking lot lights.
“The work goes a lot faster here than out in the field,” Farro said, a fifth-year IBEW 150 apprentice. He is one of 35 dedicated prefab workers who make up about 5% of the Aldridge workforce.
Nearby, in a larger 50,000-square-foot warehouse and assembly space completed in January 2022, electricians, apprentices and construction wiremen/construction electricians (CW/CEs) assemble automated truck loading bays.
They’re also assembling components of underground duct banks and raceways, including elbows for vertical stub-ups for a variety of infrastructure projects.
The newer workspace features a welding area, room for storing inventory, nine dock doors and a drive-in truck door. Aldridge also prepours concrete outdoors on its campus.
Prefabrication has been around for a long time, but computer-aided design (CAD) and building information modeling (BIM) are transforming how this work is done in the electrical industry.
CAD is an umbrella term, but most people associate it more narrowly with drawings used in engineering design. BIM provides comprehensive three-dimensional imagery for construction projects, allowing detection of conflicts between operating systems planned for buildings and infrastructure.
Aldridge Electric uses CAD and BIM to plan for and construct prefabricated components for infrastructure, building, transportation and mission-critical projects throughout the country.
Without prefabrication, employees would spend more time assembling electrical and control systems in ditches beside rail yards, at airports and alongside some of the nation’s busiest expressways.
Jeff Buckley, prefab/virtual design and construction (VDC) program manager for Aldridge, said one of the benefits of prefab is “safety. It’s much safer to do as much of this work as possible in a controlled environment instead of at the job site.”
Buckley and others enabled Aldridge to commence prefab operations in 2016 with construction of a 3,400-square-foot workshop space at its Libertyville headquarters. Since then, the company’s reliance on prefabrication has grown exponentially.
Prefab operations quickly expanded an additional 8,000 square feet in 2017 and another 8,000 square feet in 2018.
Aldridge employs a multifaceted prefabrication strategy well-suited to challenging and unique projects, such as the installation of a new lighting control system for an aging freeway and tunnel.
After scanning the tunnel’s interior, Aldridge prefabricated modular assemblies that included lights and panels. The prefabricated portions reduced risks to electricians and traffic lane closures while assuring schedule certainty.
“Meeting deadlines is another incentive for using prefab, being able to finish projects on time,” Buckley said. “Now, equipment and manpower can be utilized much more efficiently, but a lot of planning has to happen first.”
Planning starts with communication and coordinating with other contractors and stakeholders. Project teams brainstorm ideas based on plans provided by customers and information from foremen, Buckley said.
Aldridge’s VDC team is made up of modeling staff skilled in CAD and BIM. They work with the project and prefab teams to model and design the projects, creating design and spool drawings to assist with the prefab process and installation in the field.
“We create mockups and take the project from the beginning, tweaking it through the project life cycle,” Buckley said. “That way, as we go, we get better and better. Rather than assemble everything needed all at once, this prevents waste.”
Directions for prefab workers take the form of a spool sheet containing detailed specifications for materials, measurements, cut lengths and assembly. Equally detailed instructions are supplied to those working in the field.
Items arrive to job sites pretested. Because packing materials are recycled or disposed of at the prefab shop, there’s very little to clean up at the job site, Buckley said.
“We’ve had a culture shift,” he said. “When we started, it was a matter of trying to sell prefab to foremen. Now, eight years in, all our foremen are on board. They see the benefits, opportunities and the risk reduction.” Tom Hourihan, a general foreman for Aldridge lighting and building projects, agrees.
That suits Jeff Gustisha, an IBEW 150 journeyman since 1986, just fine.
“It’s a lot easier on the body, which takes a beating over time.”
Gustisha and Hourihan recently finalized components for survey carts that will enable Aldridge employees to more easily measure and plot the location of lights and power sources for 104 public transit platforms, each 600 feet in length.
Alterman’s prefab approach
Ten years ago, Alterman Inc., a San Antonio, Texas-based contractor, dedicated an 11,000-square-foot space for prefabrication.
In January 2024, the 100-year-old company will open a new 100,000-square-foot prefab facility near major thoroughfares in Live Oak, Texas.
The location supports receiving parts and materials and delivering prefabricated items to job sites throughout Texas. The surrounding 19.7-acre campus also will house a 90,000-square-foot office for Alterman’s San Antonio staff and those supporting other Alterman locations.
“One of the things that made prefab successful for us is that we focused on field buy-in, getting people in the field to see how it would benefit them,” said Greg Padalecki, Alterman president and CEO. “We asked ourselves, how can prefab be of benefit at the task level in the field?”
Alterman supplies pre-assembled materials and detailed instructions to the electricians in the field, and for installations requiring specific tools, the company’s prefab operation also delivers those.
“The role of prefab for us became to identify step-by-step project components,” Padalecki said. “We would have a bin of prefab materials developed to space, materials, directions and tools needed for one day.”
Like Buckley, Padalecki believes prefab work accomplished in a controlled environment facilitates better quality work and reduces hazards.
“There’s a lot less unpredictability. Planning that used to occur at the work site now happens at the office, leaving foremen to manage people,” he said.
Alterman relies on prefabrication for installing large conduit, telecommunications and medium-voltage work, and to assemble underground duct banks. Prefab also works well for mission-critical organizations such as hospitals and data centers, which have many data connections and plenty of repetition.
“For hospitals and healthcare facilities, we’re doing pretty much every job using prefab, like for the headboards of hospital beds where there are outlets and controls,” Padalecki said. “Things actually go better with this type of cookie-cutter repetition.”
Beyond all else, prefabrication should focus on enhancing productivity at the work site, Padalecki said.
“The more planning in the office, the higher the productivity on the job site. If everybody gets together to plan at the beginning, the project comes together better,” he said.
Only about 30–40 employees do prefab work, compared with 900 working in the field, Padalecki said.
Much like Buckley, Padalecki said effective communication is key.
“If you make a mistake in the planning, people in the field will lose confidence right away,” he said. “You must have a robust feedback loop so people know their voices are being heard and they are getting what they need.”
Also, much like Aldridge, the process at Alterman is to plan and then implement, starting with a small batch, checking in, and making adjustments for the next batch.
While customers may request plans only be drawn to a certain level of detail, Alterman often goes further.
“As electricians, we only model 1.25-inch conduit or larger because that’s what the owner pays for,” Padalecki said. “It’s not in our contract to model out in further detail, say to branch circuits, but we do anyway, even though it costs the office more. We make up for it in the field because it increases assurance that we will finish on time, on budget and safely.”
Alterman also employs CE/CWs, apprentices and journeymen to do prefab work.
“Right now, people are cycling through to become electricians, but I think one day they could have careers in this, not just cycle out,” Padalecki said. “As we get better, it’s possible prefab will become more of a manufacturing environment.”
Alterman engaged the services of Texas firm Studio8 Architects to design a flexible prefab setting to accommodate projects of varying sizes and needs. The facility will take advantage of natural light and feature a welding booth, paint booth, four loading bays and kit bins for materials and tools.
While prefab offers many advantages, smaller contractors may face challenges using it, Padalecki said.
Establishing a prefab operation requires time and resources upfront and additional physical space for assembly work and storage. As Alterman learned, that storage space is crucial due to supply chain issues.
Essential BIM and CAD operators are also extremely hard to come by.
“Once you get them trained up, they get targeted by recruiters,” Padalecki said.
For large projects involving multiple trades, BIM models enable electrical contractors to detect design clashes between proposed conduit and duct work, sprinkler systems, lighting fixtures and more.
“We can say to the other trade, can you take the cut 6 inches higher? And we make the conduit 2 inches lower? Then we don’t clash,” he said.
Padalecki can’t imagine not using prefab.
“Once people embrace it, they expect to use it,” he said. “There’s no going back. We’re past convincing people it’s a good idea. We just want to get better at it.””
Check out this article and more from Electrical Contractor here: https://www.ecmag.com/magazine/articles/article-detail/ready-made-for-productivity-prefabrication-reduces-work-hazards-yields-more-efficient-job-sites?oly_enc_id=7687B8237256J6R