LA Clippers Practice Facility: questions answered

Question 1

What was the toughest constraint on the practice facility renovation?

Accepted Answer

The Clippers wanted their practice facility redesigned one room at a time. The rooms were the locker rooms, the player lounge, and the spaces for performance, rehab, training and coaching. No NBA team gets an offseason long enough to close a building like that. So we flipped the schedule. The practice calendar stayed fixed, and the finish date was what could move. Before any drawing went to bid, we mapped what each room shared with its neighbors, meaning air, power, water and exits, and we worked one room down at a time. Since design and build both sat with us, we did not grade our own phases. Each room needed team operations to sign off before the next one opened. The final sign-off landed in October 2018, on schedule, with the team in the building the whole time.

Question 2

How did you keep the team, the trades and operations in agreement on what had to be finished before a room went back to the team?

Accepted Answer

We put the gate in writing so nobody had to rely on memory. The next room opened only when three things held. Team operations had signed the handoff on the previous one. Any temporary feed or exit standing in for a shared system was gone or made permanent. And we had the as-built of that room's shutoffs. Every small scope was placed in a phase, with one look-ahead for each phase, and each trade stayed inside its assignment. The question on site changed from what comes next to what is allowed. Anyone on the job could see whether the gate was open.

Question 3

How did keeping the building in use dictate the sequence of work?

Accepted Answer

It meant one room down at a time. Two at once would have shortened the program, but eventually the players would have had no place to lift or change. So we fixed the practice calendar and let the finish date give. Then the building set the sequence. Ahead of any drawing going out, we mapped what the rooms shared: air handling, electrical, drains, exits, fire zones, structure, dust, and where crews walk. The schedule came out of that map.

Question 4

Which room went first at the practice facility, and what drove that?

Accepted Answer

The player and coaching schedules set the order. One piece was the new coaches' locker room. The coach wanted his staff to have a place to be at all times, and there was space to make that work. The Clippers were great to work with. We came in at times when we would not be a distraction, and since their practice schedule was set, it never became a big issue.