Prefabrication: material cost vs. labor cost

    I was trying to come up with a formula for masonry contractors of how to quantify in dollars how utilizing prefabricated brick arches saves money.  Like a profit & loss statement there are fixed numbers and numbers that can manipulated.  We are doing a job right now for LFJ masonry called Watkins MOB in Virginia.  We have prefabricated and delivered 86 brick arches.  Eusebio Cantone of LFJ told me that when they estimated the project they added the price of the arches to the material costs and subtracted estimated production time in hours from their take-off.  He said:

     "The largest benefit is that we can set these and keep going, we don't have to wait! At the end of the day you can figure the total time you took to fabricate the arches (man-hours) and that would be your time savings on the project. Based on crew size and number of arches on the project you could also determine the following, the project saved X number of man-hours to fabricate and set arches therefore saving X number of days on the total project and that is where equipment savings comes in as well."

I figured we used 8 diamond blades, cut over 8000 brick, purchased, cut and bent 3500 feet of #4 epoxy coated rebar, 20 boxes of wall ties, and purchased and mixed 800 bags of cement/grout.  We also dedicated 2 employees to work on this project for 100 days each.  This does not take into account utilities, fuel, transportation, and maintenance.  Other costs that are sometimes overlooked by contractors that are reduced by installing prefabricated arches are rental equipment, employee insurance and liability.

So here is the math that gives you more profit:

$ INCOME

- $ ARCHWAY SYSTEM PREFAB

= X

+ $ SAVED IN LABOR HOURS 

+ PRODUCTIVITY ( $ FROM DAYS ON SITE)

+ MATERIAL NOT PURCHASED (REBAR, CEMENT, WALL TIES, ETC.)

+ EMPLOYEE LIABILITY

+ EFFICIENCY (ON TIME DELIVERY, START THE NEXT JOB SOONER)

+ RENTAL COSTS AND MAINTENANCE FEES SAVED

= MORE $$$$$$$$$$$

The hardest thing to put into the equation is efficiency...lets say LFJ masonry finished this project 20 work days ahead of schedule, how do we add a dollar amount to the equation.  In reality that same masonry crew can complete more jobs in a given year, therefore increasing revenue.  I think efficiency would be a % that carries over to the revenue for the year on the profit/loss statement.  

Thanks Seb.  When I take some pictures of the finished buildings I will be sure to post them.  

Making Cast Stone

We are making buff color cast stone pier caps for a custom home in Anne Arundel County.  There are ten foot tall "L" shape stone piers with radial cast stone arches connecting them for a front porch.  We are making the radial arches as well as the pier caps.






Julio Ibarra and Nick Holland are the two craftsmen in our cast stone shop working on this project.  We make the cast stone upside down in a birch mold box.  We then flip it out and take the mold box apart.  Then Nick can reassemble the mold box and make the same shape over and over.



We start with 4 parts sand, 1 part portland cement, 1 part proprietary mix, and 1 part water. The cast stone must cure with humidity and a constant temperature. After 7 days the stone is 95% cured and ready to install. 
Here is a shop drawing of the radial arch with soffit.

Painted Brick?

We are supplying prefabricated brick jack arches to an Eya townhouse project near the navy yard in the up-and-coming part of Washington D.C. near Nationals park. The masonry contractor is Keller Construction. The townhouses are 100% sold even though the buyers can't move in until 2012!

http://www.eya.com/capitol_quarter

The candy colors are painted on after the final masonry wash down by a painting company. There is something about painting a new brick house that bugs me. Is this a new trend or are they going for some Washington D.C. historical charm? I have no idea how the paint effects the natural moisture barrier brick provides. One of the advantages of masonry is it allows the building to breathe and moisture can escape. The paint may lock moisture in the air cavity causing mold and acctually suffocate the building.

Plus it looks like Martha's Vineyard, a little too cute for my taste.

Post Tension Brick Jack Arch

We are currently prefabricating 8 foot long brick jack arches for a project in Philadelphia that have no angle iron support under the brickwork. Oh the joys of design-build. Actually it has given us the chance to try a system that Ray Wethington invented, of using post tension #4 epoxy coated rebar through he length of the arch.

Post-tensioned is the descriptive term for a method of applying compression after pouring concrete and the curing process. 99% of the brick jack arches we prefabricate are set on steel angle irons, and it is the steel that carries the load of the weight above the masonry opening. We do make structural jack arches but code usually dictates steel reinforcement unless a historical variance is given.

For this job we are drilling a 1" hole into the brick before we prefab the arch. Then we are inserting the rebar that has a hook on one end and threaded on the other end. We then tighten a nut on the rebar threaded end giving the brick jack arch post tension strength. The dramatic effect is 8 foot straight spans with brick and joints visible from below.

Brick Arches of the Roman Colosseum

Walking up to the Colosseum through the modern streets of Rome with my wife Brigid made me feel alive. I felt proud to work for a company that designs brick arches because there is no greater proof of masonry’s mastery than in Rome. I also felt insignificant in the physical and historical scope of the Colosseum. The stories of thousands of people who had died and cheered on the spot I was standing are what movies are made of.

The exterior of the Colosseum is made from white travertine stone that was quarried from the local hillside and held together with iron clamps. I was surprised to learn that all of the interior was brick and mortar. I we walked through the arcades and hallways, the tour guide gave a short talk on the significance of Roman technological breakthroughs in the field of masonry. The Romans discovered that masonry strength was not compromised by adding arches to span openings. The strength of the masonry structure increases as weight is dispersed above an arch.

The structural brick arches of the seating areas held up as many as 80,000 people as well as the weight of the masonry above it. The arena itself has a brick underground structure that allowed for trap doors with people and animals below like in the movie Gladiator. The brick jack arches of the arena and ground level doors were brilliantly designed and built.

Using four foot long brick, the Romans constructed the jack arch for functionality. The jack arches that supported the arena floor have a 77 degree skew but the jack arches under the massive seating area are built with a 70 degree skew to support more weight above it. What a marvel of engineering.

Cast Stone Arch

Chuck of Oswald Masonry placed an order for jack arches, sills, and radial arches made of cast stone for a 5 unit townhouse. Cast stone or precast is a concrete product that essentially is man made limestone. We fabricate cast stone in our shop using raw materials in a mix of approximately 70% sand, 20% portland cement, 10% water, and less than 1% admixture of superplasticizer and water reducer. Here are pictures of the stone starting at the CAD design.

full scale paper template

template made into a wooden mold


We use the dry tamp method to make our cast stone at Archway System. Dry tamp uses zero slump concrete (the consistency of pancake mix if you only used half the milk the recipe called for). We make a custom mold of what the finished stone is going to look like and add the mix into the mold. We then use a vibrating rammer to tamp the mix into the mold face down. Epoxy coated rebar is inserted in the middle of the stone for reinforcement and then more mix is added and tamped until the desired thickness is achieved. The mold is then flipped onto a table and the mold is removed.

stone flipped out of mold



The stone is then "pointed up" by hand to fix any imperfections that happened when removing the mold. Then the mold is put back together and the process repeated all day long.

5 cast stone arches


Cast stone cures in warm temperature and high humidity on these tables and is about 95% cured after 7 days. The arches are rock solid after a few days and the brick layer installs the cast stone above the windows.

Maple Lawn in Howard County Maryland/Oswald Masonry

Chevron

Wikipedia defines a chevron as a v shape pattern. We see this in nature with Canadian geese flying overhead. In my case it has to do with architecture, in particular with a herringbone brick pattern.



This is a custom design of a firebox with a herringbone pattern. The architect wanted to replicate a slate fireplace with 1" x 6" brick shapes. The bond works out to 1/5 with a 1/4" joint. As you can see in the following picture, there is a central chevron in the back panel of the fireplace, and visually the firebox has 3 chevrons pointing up on the back panel, and 3 chevrons on the side panels.



This firebox is pleasing to the eye, but a real pain in the but for the bricklayer to layout. I hope to post some pics of the finished fireplace soon.