When Southland Holdings began searching for a new location for their rapidly growing personnel, Alston Construction was currently building one of their new warehouse facilities nearby. With the current success of the warehouse facility, Alston Construction was contracted to design and build the new corporate headquarters in Grapevine, Texas. With the help of Alston’s design partners, Alliance Architects, the team successfully built a 40,000 square foot tilt-wall office building with high end finishes that met the demand of their rapidly growing company.
Southland Holdings’ new corporate headquarters is a multi-story office building with steel framing that consists of open and private offices, conference rooms, and a large breakroom. The two story lobby features extensive glazing, allowing ample light within the space. Associated parking is included. The new headquarters will provide an ideal centralized location and the necessary space to continue Southland’s impressive growth in size and service offerings.
With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, it’s not a secret that the office building market sector was greatly impacted, including many of their trade partners. In order to keep the project on track for Southland Holdings to move in when expected, the Alston Construction team implemented constant communication and coordination with all project stakeholders to align expectations on quality, schedule, and occupancy requirements. Weekly work planning, weekly trades planning, and coordination meetings with reviews were part of the schedule in order to meet it in time.
Southland Holdings had a budget that could not budge; however, they wanted the corporate headquarters to be a place where they could impress employees and their visitors with finishes such as feature walls and an amenity park. They also had an expected open date. Fast track construction and remaining flexible to accommodate numerous design changes were vital to complete this project successfully. The Alston Construction team identified materials and equipment that needed to be expedited in the planning and procurement phases. We also coordinated with critical trades to anticipate anything in the schedule such as labor overtime or material delays to meet the expected schedule.
The owner, Southland Holdings, is also a part of the construction industry that works primarily in infrastructure and civil construction. To create savings to reallocate to higher end finishes, Southland Holdings self-performed their site and dirt work before the building pad (when Alston Construction was contracted to mobilize onsite). Because of their inexperience in commercial construction’s site and dirt work, Alston partnered with their teams to ensure the fill was to spec of the geotechnical reports. The Alston Construction team also helped establish other cost savings on the site work by utilizing by-product from the Mill Creek Drainage Relief tunneling project in the city of Dallas. The team used the material extracted from the tunnels as the infill for the Southland Holdings Headquarters building pad and paving areas. Because the Southland team did not have to pay soil import or export costs, this saved a large portion of the budget that they could reallocate elsewhere.
The Southland Holdings Headquarters building meets the new trends in the office market to prioritize office culture embracing in-person collaboration and employee well-being. The office features a bocce field, a putting green, and high-end finishes such as epoxy flooring and wall-to-wall greenery along with the other conference rooms for collaboration. The project team collaborated and safely completed the new office building within the client’s expectations for a high-end new location and even returned significant cost savings.