HQ IQ: Smart Owner Makes a Difference

Owners Matter

Delve into the design and construction of Safety National Casualty Corp.’s new corporate headquarters and a simple, important lesson emerges: the owner makes a difference.

The most striking features of the new 138,000-square-foot Class A office building in Maryland Heights, MO, are the rich finishes. The exterior, which features glass, granite, and precast concrete, is not as impressive as the interior. Visitors enter through a two-story atrium lobby with granite flooring, cherry wood paneling and specialty lighting. Perimeter offices on every floor sport 7-foot cherry finished doors in hollow metal painted frames with frosted glass sidelights and clerestory glass above to let natural light shine into the central work areas. Elevator bays are similarly impressive, with granite flooring and accents, while conference rooms include smart boards and the latest audio-visual technology.

The five-story building includes a lower level with a data center, training rooms, and a multipurpose that can be divided into three areas, including a large dining area with multiple dishwashers and microwave ovens, all backed up with an emergency electrical generator.
“In today’s market, you don’t see a lot of people building a Class A building like this,” said Keith Cohen, director of preconstruction for Duke Construction, the general contractor. “It has very nice finishes, including wood panels and granite, which we typically don’t see today.”

Yet, they didn’t an excessive amount of money to do it. Built at a cost of $19 million, “they got great value,” said Bruce Brophy, principal at CRA Development LLC, a company of Coldwell Banker Commercial CRA LLC, which was the development manager for the project. “Safety National created a first-class facility without going over the top. This corporate headquarters features quality design and amenities that will stand the test of time,” he said.

The Client was Prepared

It was the owner’s involvement that made the project so extraordinarily successful, Brophy said. “Safety National had engaged in enough planning ahead of time to give us time on the design to plan with them and worked through scenarios for the best product,” he said.

“Safety National senior management were heavily involved throughout the process,” Cohen said. “They were great listeners and great participators. We were able to present a lot of ideas to them and get and get quick responses, which allowed us to get great opportunities. A lot of times, what adds to the cost of a building is the time involved in getting decisions made. You present an idea and the owner takes a month to think it over and then you’ve lost that opportunity. That didn’t happen here,” he said. “Because we could be creative in the design/build process, we saved them money which they could put into finishes,” he added.

“Our planning process was not unusual, but the beauty in this case is that Safety National understood their growth needs. They really knew what they wanted and where they needed to be,” said Rick Clawson, principal at ACI Boland, the architectural firm on the project. “When we asked them questions, they had already spent time thinking about them. Having an educated and prepared client is great for an architect,” he said.

Clawson explained that there were two distinct planning processes. One was when Safety National bought the 16-acre site from the Special School District. “Their goal was to start a future campus. There was a lot of land planning for four buildings: 300,000 square feet of office space and a parking garage,” he said. After the city approved new zoning and the land plan, “then we went into planning interiors of the new building with Safety National and Coldwell Banker. We spent a lot of time looking at their projected growth and at how departments interact, then we brought in ColorArt to work with us on furniture,” he said.

Roger Oertli, chief operating officer and project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., said Guarantee got more time up front to design the electrical, voice, and data systems that Safety National wanted, too. “We were brought in very early to work on the design, before they had decided what to do on the data room or with the phones. That gave the owners more time to decide what they really wanted,” he said.

“We worked closely with the design team on their plans. As Safety National’s facility manager, we had a good feeling for what they wanted and what worked with their culture, but we brought their people in to make sure that at the end of the day it was functional,” said Brophy of Coldwell Banker.

 “This building was designed with a view to the future of Safety National,” said Duane Hercules, Safety National’s chief financial officer and executive vice president of mergers and acquisitions. Two specific concerns were prominent in the design of the building: ensuring the company’s ability to operate in an emergency and keeping employees comfortable.

Emergency Back-up

The lower level, which houses the file system, the building operations center, the data center, training rooms wired with Cat 6A cabling, and the multipurpose room, is backed up with a generator.

“The data facility is more than most people would put in, and it has a lot of back up, a generator and UPS,” Oertli said. “The light and safety systems are on the emergency generator, too, which is really unusual,” he added. “That is so they can continue to  work if they lose power again for three or more days.”

As part of planning for a power outage, the kitchen and multipurpose room have “quite a bit of voice and data wiring,” said Colin Quinn, the project manager for GECO Systems, which installed the voice and data systems. That is so the lower level can serve as a fully functioning emergency headquarters if another storm knocks AmerenUE for loop. “They can relocate employees downstairs and still function and provide everything for their clients. It is way over and above what the typical office has,” Clawson said.

Safety National opted for Cat 6A low voltage wiring, which is still a rarity in St. Louis, because “they are trying to get to the point where all their systems: computers, HVAC, security cameras, and fire protection, can be monitored off site,” said Oertli. They have a dozen conference rooms with smart boards and large screen audio/video systems – “most buildings only have one,” he said. The phone system uses VOIP (voice over internet protocol), and every sink has a water sensor. “They even have sensors in the janitor’s closet,” Quinn said.

“We got premium systems,” Brophy agreed, “but it was cost effective. All the systems were designed before the final plan was done. I think that is why we were able to keep the price under control,” he said.

Keeping Employee Comfort in Mind

Safety National’s consideration for its employees was expressed in numerous details throughout the design. “They were more concerned with keeping people comfortable, with what would keep them happy, with what would attract and keep good employees, than you usually see,” Cohen said. “For example, revolving doors aren’t unusual, but you typically don’t see them in a single user building. They have a receptionist, who is going to be sitting in the lobby. They wanted to make sure that she was not going to be hit with constant shots of cold air. They wanted a revolving door so as to maintain comfort for her. That is an example of their thought process. You don’t hear about anybody else doing stuff like that in today’s market,” he said.

Brophy pointed to other examples. The computer room was built with a lower floor than the rest of the lower level so that when the raised floor was installed it would be level with the rest of the floors on that level. The private offices were designed perpendicular to the perimeter wall. “That gained them 36 percent more offices,” Brophy said, and the dividers between those offices and the interior of the building are glass “so that natural light flows to the interior,” he said.

The chief challenge to the project was the site itself, Cohen said. “It is a long linear site that slopes to the back, and they are setting back their first building, and the lower level is half in grade, and that becomes a challenge,” he said.

“All the rain we had and the volume of water it created coming down the hill – that was the main challenge,” Brophy said. “We had to put a drainage system in front of the site to channel water away to the stormwater system,” he said.

About the stormwater system – the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District issued new water quality rules in the middle of the project. “That was a big deal. We just missed getting grandfathered in,” said Clawson. The new rules meant Safety National had to allocate additional ground for stormwater detention and the cost involved went up substantially.

“This was the first project to meet MSD’s new clean water standards,” Brophy said. But Safety National turned the lemon into lemonade. “Stock and Associates came up with creative solutions that involved plantings and putting a walking trail around the detention pond, which made it into an attractive amenity,” Clawson said.

“These regulations are going in across the country, not just in St. Louis,” Cohen said. “When you are not used to them, they seem a challenge. Yeah, there are some costs, but in the end, it worked out the best for everyone. It turned into a real amenity,” he said.
Safety National Casualty Corp. is a leading provider of excess workers' compensation coverage to self-insured employers and self-insured groups nationwide, many of them in the construction industry. Safety National is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delphi Financial Group Inc., a $5.5 billion insurance holding company.


SNI Headquarters

Project Team

Owner: Safety National Casualty Corp.
Developer: CRA Development LLC, a company of Coldwell Banker Commercial CRA
Architects & Engineers: ACI Boland; Geotechnology; Heidemann Associates; KPFF Consulting Engineers; Loomis & Associates; Stock & Associates
General Contractor: Duke Construction
Major Subcontractors:

• Affton Fabricating
• Allied Waterproofing
• ASC Insulation
• Baxter Farms
• Bick Group
• Cabinet Masters
• Charles E. Jarrell Contracting
• Collins & Hermann
• Edward Simon Painting
• Fabri-Tech Sheet Metal
• Fenix Construction
• Ford Asphalt
• Friend Acoustical
• General Signs
• Gershenson Construction
• Guarantee Electrical
• Hydro Dynamics
• JDS Masonry
• John Bender Inc.
• Kehrer Brothers
• Kelpe Contracting
• Kirkwood Excavating
• O.J. Laughlin Plumbing
• McDaniel Fire Systems
• Mid-America Precast
• MJ Products
• Murphy Co.
• Otis Elevator
• Roberts Loading Dock
• Sebco Cos.
• Signature Craft
• Subsurface Constructors
• Warren Signs
• West St. Louis Glass
• Zumwalt Corp.

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