Almost a third of the way complete, the Watercrest Columbia Senior Living Facility is making great progress despite recent weather obstacles. The Shiel Sexton team took additional precautions to prepare for both Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael that were schedule to make landfall within a two-week span to eliminate any damage that might happen to the structure of the erected building.
John DeWalt, Senior Project Manager on the Watercrest Columbia project, explained the recent storm preparations.
“The wall panels that were standing had bracing on them already, but we went back to the engineer with the predicted wind speeds from the hurricanes. He ran some calculations and provided details for adding additional bracing and increasing the size and screw patterns of the brace anchors to provide additional support to the walls. It took 3-4 people to install this additional bracing ahead of the storm, but this resulted in none of the panels on site getting damaged from the high winds.”
Upon completion, this facility will provide senior living residences with luxurious and modern amenities, with a delivery of care as unique as the community. It will provide cultural programs, interesting activities and enjoyable outings, as well as memory care with nationally certified dementia practitioners.
John points out, “The building utilizes a prefabricated structural wall panel and Ecospan deck system for the structure of the building as well as what will be high-end finishes in the common areas. The building will also house an interior ‘Market Street’ area that will have the look and feel of a small town main street area for the residents, complete with a post office, bakery, salon/spa, barber shop, and art studio.”
Shiel Sexton’s processes and team members from preconstruction to the on-site project team have been both proactive and team-oriented in their approach to sharing information and solving issues with the architects at LifeBuilt as well as ownership at Watercrest. Having these relationships and their positive results directly led to Shiel Sexton being selected to continue with Watercrest and LifeBuilt with the new construction of a second slated Watercrest facility in Fort Mill, SC that began construction in September.
The Watercrest Columbia project will wrap up in early 2019, and Watercrest Fort Mill is scheduled for completion in early 2020. Check out the drone footage of Watercrest Columbia taken this month below!