Coastal Radiates QUALITY Throughout the Sunshine State

“This is a people business, a relationship business. Our vice president of marketing and business development, Bob Parsons, is out there turning over every stone, and provides preconstruction services as much as possible.”

Implementation Process: One Week at a Time

On any of Coastal's Design/Build projects, the team works directly with customers from day one, to design a mechanical system best suited to the owner's needs. The result is a project with a realistic budget, little or no change orders, and the most effective design from the start.

To support its Design/Build excellence and maintain high efficiency, Coastal knows where they are at every moment of the construction process.

Once a project's logistics and sequences have been analyzed, and the engineering drawings have been coordinated with all trades, CMS employs a Short Interval Production Planning (SIPP) process for the duration of the project. This process — initiated by P.J. Goodwin — starts with drywall coordination, and provides a weekly “look ahead” for the following three weeks. Precise manpower and supply needs are scheduled accordingly. The process drives the project, and ensures schedules are met on time.

“We ‘SIPP’ the job away one week at a time. There are no excuses for not having a procedure completed by the following week,” Goodwin explains. “We get together when we craft the next three week plan and see how we did. It prevents us from getting lost on large projects.”

Sheet metal and piping crews at Coastal's four-acre Melbourne facility fabricate large sections of pipe and ductwork for all projects. This provides the crews with a controlled work environment, and spares them the hectic and time-consuming atmosphere often found on jobsites.

‘Sleeping Giant’ Awakes

Bob Parsons and Al Osterhout met in 2005, when CMS was working on the $30 million Rosen Shingle Creek luxury hotel and convention center project. Six months later, Parsons “took a leap of faith,” and joined Coastal. Parsons says he used to think of Coastal as a sleeping giant with tremendous growth potential, but one not very well known in the contracting industry at large.

“That changed over the last three or four years, as Coastal's exposure grew. The quality of our work, and the way we work has become more widely known,” Parsons says.

Parsons, working closely with Trevor Lewis, the senior preconstruction and business development associate, oversees existing customer contacts, establishes new ones, and ensures that good faith relationships remain intact. A man who chooses his words carefully, Parsons believes in the importance of quality in communication, not just the finished product.

“Quality in communication is about sharing our professionalism and attitude, and the things Coastal does best. It's about establishing a high degree of trust, and keeping your word, which is the most valuable thing you can offer,” Parsons insists.

Dedicated to Energy Efficiency

Coastal Mechanical adheres to energy conservation practices through its participation in Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED^®). Osterhout himself has been LEED accredited for five years.

“LEED is a wonderful opportunity for the construction industry,” Osterhout says. “It's a big sales tool, and also the right thing to do. LEED and building efficiency are here to stay, and our customers are demanding it. We attended a presentation for a large hospital being built in central Florida, and the hospital officials insisted that our on-site people be LEED accredited. So, I've requested that we have at least two LEED accredited people at each branch office.

“LEED requires very little additional work for us, because we follow most of the LEED requirements anyway. There are some additional paperwork, recycling, and commissioning requirements, but generally, we don't put any extra money in our bids because it's a LEED program.”

Hospital Construction a Healthy Sector

CMS has accumulated a vast amount of experience in health care construction. This segment remains vibrant in Florida. But until recently, CMS handled only the largest of projects. That changed about two years ago, when Dan Dietel was recruited to start and manage a special projects division, focusing on HVAC, plumbing, and medical gas piping projects with associated costs of $2 million and below.