Image courtesy of SGA
Construction of a new 120,000-square-foot office building for The Kraft Group at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough came with unique requirements for architects SGA and the project team.
The New England Patriots owners sought to complete the project in a year, more than twice the speed of a typical office development, while maintaining maximum flexibility for the future use of the facility by their own companies and potential third-party tenants.
“What we had to do is design a project that is non-traditional. There’s no way we can deliver this project without overlapping design and construction quite a bit,” said Michael Schroeder, a partner at SGA.
The project is being completed in less than half the time of a typical office building of its size. Starting in June 2021, Boston-based SGA used a proprietary dashboard to coordinate the architectural, engineering and construction schedule on the fly. The project has already obtained temporary certificates of occupancy for portions of the building, with final completion scheduled for October.
Construction crews from Dellbrook | JKS also have had to work around the off-season events and concerts at the 66,000-capacity stadium, which connects to the new office building near entrance ramps on the north side of the complex. The preseason kicks off at Gillette on Thursday night.
SGA has used similar techniques on projects including Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ 50-60 Binney St. development in Cambridge and the Two Drydock office tower in Boston’s Seaport District, Schroeder said.
In Foxborough, SGA was assigned to develop a four-story building for a variety of potential uses including offices for The Kraft Group, the Patriots and International Forest Products. The four-story office building also was designed to accommodate a vertical addition for potential expansion and use by outside tenants.
To accommodate the fast-track project timeline, architects met with subcontracting teams initially to discuss potential supply chain relays related to procurement of building materials. Architects and engineers worked together on the transition from design drawings to shop drawings with detailed assembly instructions, rather than separate processes.
“The challenge here is setting up the project in a way that people can work together in a high-trust way, so that we can start sharing information,” Schroeder said.
After the project launch, The Kraft Group asked for the structure to be designed to accommodate an additional two floors, requiring redesign of rooftop mechanical equipment. The last-minute request would have been disruptive to a traditional project, but fit in seamlessly with the design-build approach, Schroeder said.
“It’s a continuous delivery process,” he said. “The project couldn’t stop just because we hit a milestone. We’re moving at 60 miles an hour and everything is always moving forward.”
