St. Louis, Missouri, August 15, 2019 -- Located in the heart of Purdue University’s campus life, the Rise on Chauncey is a new, 458,000 square-foot student apartment development recently completed by Brinkmann Constructors for CA Student Living, the student housing division of Chicago-based CA Ventures. At sixteen-stories, the Rise on Chauncey is West Lafayette, Indiana’s tallest building and includes 283 fully furnished luxury apartments ranging from studios up to four-bedroom units with a total of 675 beds. This complex project was completed in 19 months and in time for the Fall 2019 semester.
When budget issues arose while in the design phase with another general contractor and threatened to derail the project, CA came to Brinkmann Constructors to help get the project back on-track because of Brinkmann’s proven performance on several other CA Ventures projects. By providing alternate design ideas and utilizing unique construction techniques, Brinkmann was able to reduce the cost of the building and ultimately save the project from being terminated due to budget overages.
The Brinkmann team presented many items that provided added value to the project, however, the most significant was a redesign of the building’s foundation and earth retention systems. Additionally, the team addressed the exterior skin panel sizes by making them more modular thereby reducing the amount of wasted material. In total, over $2 million of solutions were accepted and implemented during the design phase.
During the 19 months of construction, the Brinkmann team was faced with many challenges that required considerable coordination, precise timing and smart construction techniques. For example, at the closest point, the new building was just 8” from a neighboring 12-story building that began construction at the exact same time. This complication required extensive coordination of the tower crane with the neighboring tower crane throughout the duration of the project and close monitoring of the earth retention design for each project was critical. Due to this near zero lot line, Brinkmann had very little lay-down space for equipment and materials and had to utilize “just in time” deliveries to keep the project moving.
Another challenge to the project schedule was that it did not allow for the building’s exterior skin to wait until the concrete structure was complete. Brinkmann placed electric mast climbing scaffolding around the perimeter of the building to allow the building structure and skin trades to work simultaneously by alternating which of the tower sections they were working on. This also provided a safer working environment by not having one trade working directly over another. This allowed the interior drywall to begin much earlier, in fact, at one time the team was in the finish phase of the units while still placing the concrete frame.
