Case Study

The WC Eagles Field Hockey Club had experienced substantial growth and needed an expanded metal building facility for indoor practice and training.  Two things were particularly important in this project:

 

1. Cost control of the steel structure
2. A deadline that needed to be met for the opening date.

Richard Kentwell contacted several other local companies who had recently built metal buildings. Keystone Steel Structure’s customers gave excellent recommendations for them.

 

Richard did his homework well. He contacted 4 other businesses which Keystone had built for. He inquired about Keystone’s ability to meet schedules, their workmanship, and ability to solve problems. Each one responded without hesitation that the work was completed ahead of schedule, they were well satisfied with the workmanship, and because of open lines of communication there were no problems, only solutions. They expressed that “If there were details that need to be fixed, Keystone Steel Structures promptly addressed them.”

 

Along with a tight timeline is the necessity to coordinate all the trades. Schedules need to mesh. On this project many times the different trades needed to work side by side to meet the tight deadline. That takes a lot of cooperation, but the team at Keystone Steel Structures provided excellent management. The easy and open communication between Elam King, from Keystone Steel Structures, and Richard flowed down to everyone else working on the job. The result? The metal building was completed 2 weeks before the deadline! Now that’s teamwork! The short punch list of items that needed to be addressed was completed before the opening day.

 

In an effort to reduce cost and improve the appearance of the metal building interior, Keystone suggested using an alternative roof structure—cold formed bar joists. This not only resulted in reducing the cost by $100,000.00 but it also created a stronger structure.

 

Keystone provided WC Eagles with mockups of building color selections so they could preview what the metal building would look like before it was even started. WC Eagles originally asked for a vertical yellow stripe at every downspout. Elam politely pointed out that fewer stripes would be more appealing (see photo). Elam also shaved dollars off the cost by redesigning the application of the colored panels that create the horizontal yellow stripe.

 

WC Eagles had originally contracted Keystone to complete only the steel structure, but having developed a comfortable working relationship they decided to award them the contract for the interior finishing work also. Numerous people have commented on the neatness and detail of the finish job. After the building was complete, Keystone gladly stepped up to the plate to help the WC Eagles with their grand opening: hanging banners, catering food, and providing traffic control. Their great food was the highlight of a very enjoyable day!

 

In a follow-up visit several months later Elam asked Richard the all important customer satisfaction question, “What could we have done better?” After a long pause Richard responded, “This may sound ridiculous, but I really can’t think of anything. You went the extra mile to make ensure that the building was completed on time without cutting any corners or sacrificing quality. Through your timely suggestions we feel we ended up with a better designed building than we anticipated!”