Lease Crutcher Lewis

A diversified portfolioFor over a century, Seattle-based Lease Crutcher Lewis has ridden out the ups and downs of the economy through a diversified portfolio of work, innovation, and an adaptable approach to meeting client needs, Gary Toushek learns. In 1886 in Great Falls, Montana, carpenter Newton Lease and a partner formed general contractor Lease & Leigland. Soon this was a leading Montana contractor, building projects such as the Cascade County Courthouse.  Son Howard Lease moved the company to Seattle in 1939, where it constructed the main terminal at Sea-Tac Airport. Howard LeaseÔÇÖs son-in-law Jim Crutcher joined the firm in 1957, followed by grandson Bill Lewis in 1978. In 1989 the company became Lease Crutcher Lewis. Offices were added in Portland, Oregon (1993), Tacoma, Washington (2001), and Toronto, Ontario (2003). For 122 years the company has been family-led. It was owned by a small group of shareholders, primarily the senior staff, until 2008, when ownership was expanded to the entire staff through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The ESOP is a great new retirement benefit and encourages an ÔÇ£ownership cultureÔÇØ in which everyone works for the best interest of the company and each other. Today, Lease Crutcher Lewis (Lewis) sports a diverse portfolio of projects including office, parking, school, hospital, hotel, high-rise residential, biotech, manufacturing and retail. Jeff Cleator, who has been with the firm since college, manages its largest business unit, the Commercial Division in Seattle. This division builds larger work in the $20,000,000 to $200,000,000 range, while the Special Projects Division handles smaller projects. Cleator says the company focuses primarily on negotiated work where it can combine its experience, product knowledge and creative solutions with the design teamÔÇÖs vision to generate value-oriented designs for the customer.ÔÇ£We provide traditional management on all our projects,ÔÇØ says Cleator. ÔÇ£Additionally, we self-perform the structural work, including concrete foundations, slabs, columns, and shear walls as well as steel installations so we can control the critical path. Most other work is subcontracted. We customize our approach on every contract by listening to the owners and understanding how they define success, and by understanding the core proficiencies of the other team members. Then we fill in the gaps with our diversified staff of 150 salaried professionals and our creative approach.ÔÇØCleator adds that the company has extensive experience in LEED construction. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖve built 32 LEED projects in the Northwest, including current projects. We make sure each LEED project has a LEED-accredited Lewis representative and remain very active in the US Green Building Council. Owners generally pursue LEED because it provides them a competitive advantage or because itÔÇÖs simply the right thing to do. Once theyÔÇÖve established their goals, we can help them administer the process and determine the most meaningful, economical way of achieving their desired certification. We see LEED as simply another way of providing value for the owner. A focus on LEED also matches our own environmental ethic as a company.ÔÇØ Tools such as building information modeling (BIM) have been in the companyÔÇÖs arsenal for at least a decade, to coordinate design elements in advance and eliminate any surprises during construction. It employs all the CAD (computer-aided design), modeling and clash-detection software programs. ÔÇ£We use time sequencing in our project planning to make sure that the various components of an installation will fit together,ÔÇØ Cleator says. ÔÇ£BIM is a means to an end. We donÔÇÖt attempt to model every component of every project. Instead, we treat it as a set of tools and implement the level of detail appropriate to address the true risk areas of the project. At the same time, weÔÇÖre successful in working with design teams to use BIM at whatever level the team prefers.ÔÇØ Lewis is not afraid to implement new technologies, Cleator says. ÔÇ£A more conservative approach would be to use only systems proven long ago, but itÔÇÖs hard to create value for your clients if youÔÇÖre not innovating. We have confidence in our management team to successfully implement new technologies and overcome the inevitable hurdles. For example, we have two office projects along the waterfront with heavy groundwater. Cutter soil mix (CSM) walls are a relatively new shoring system that allows for retention of the sides of an excavation when itÔÇÖs below the water table. CSM is proving successful on both these projects cost-effectively.ÔÇØ Offshore material procurement is another advantage. Materials such as casework and curtain wall can be procured from China at 20ÔÇô30 percent below whatÔÇÖs locally available. ÔÇ£These days, unpredictable commodity pricing creates a huge variable in our estimating efforts,ÔÇØ Cleator says. ÔÇ£When the owner applies for construction financing, he wants to eliminate budget uncertainty, so weÔÇÖve gotten more creative with purchasing. In some cases we will purchase and store materials ourselves and then assign those contracts to the appropriate subcontractors after the traditional bidding period. We also promote and encourage our owners to hire the subcontractors and vendors earlier during design development, use the subsÔÇÖ expertise with their own supply chains to understand where the variability is, then hedge our risk as appropriate.ÔÇØLewis is just completing the Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Seattle, an upscale (five-star) 21-story building with 149 hotel rooms plus 36 luxury condominiums above. And currently under construction is a 28-story office building for Touchstone Corporation called West 8th, with a concrete shear core design. The elevator and stair core is a rigid concrete tube that runs along the full height of the building to provide seismic strength, reducing the number of steel frames that would otherwise impede office layouts. But it takes longer to build than a steel structure, because normally concrete construction proceeds slowly. To expedite construction, Cleator says, ÔÇ£We got innovative and modified the vendor-supplied formwork system. We pre-manufactured as much of the reinforcing steel curtains as possible including the structural steel embeds. We also used a self-consolidating concrete that reduced labor costs and increased set times. In the end, we constructed a floor every three days, which is as fast as IÔÇÖve ever seen in SeattleÔÇÖs seismic zone.ÔÇØ The economic downturn is affecting construction everywhere, and Seattle is no exception. ÔÇ£It looks like the industry has peaked for this cycle,ÔÇØ Cleator says. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖre starting to see more competitive subcontractor pricing, and worker availability is improving. WeÔÇÖre also seeing tighter availability of financing. So while we still have a strong backlog of projects in planning and pre-construction through 2009, weÔÇÖre starting to prepare for the market slowdown. WeÔÇÖve been here before. Through our diversified work portfolio, strong relationships and customized approach in servicing our customers, weÔÇÖll continue to be successful.ÔÇØ┬á