Development, Industrial Planning & Construction Case Study

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Challenge

Lisi’s factory in Torrance is part of an international group of factories that builds fasteners and specialty parts. The Torrance factory, made up of 10 buildings, builds aerospace fasteners and collars for Boing and Airbus. Lisi’s Torrance facility is leased from the City of Torrance, and adjacent to the Torrance Airport. The entire plant is aging with some buildings nearing 100 years old. Lisi tried for 3 years to create a modernization plan for their plating lines. The plating lines add coatings needed for temperature and corrosion resistance in aircraft parts. Under the existing plating line was a chemical retention pit that over the years had been purposed to collect all chemical waste from all factory buildings. The pit was leaking and contaminating ground water underneath. The Torrance management team was focused on refurbishment of their existing plating line, or repurposing a storage building, however they had not completed programming for all of their equipment, laboratory and wastewater requirements (including cyanide and other highly toxic chemicals), nor had they considered business continuity. It was also their goal to increase production by changing from manual processes to automated processes. After 3 years, upper management realized that their in-house team was never going to be able to properly plan and execute the project.

Solution

Lisi hired Jack Kozakar. Jack started the project with four overarching strategies. First, Jack would boil down the three years of work that had been done to develop a concise scope, preliminary master and alternative master plan, and RFP requirements. Second, Jack would create a program of requirements and reevaluate the size and location of the project. Third, Jack would assess all of the safety aspects of the project, from environmental compliance to potential spill containment, and build every aspect of safety into project planning. Fourth, Jack would work with management to create a project delivery strategy that worked with Lisi’s risk-adverse corporate culture and create the project team to deliver the project.

Results

The project was a tremendous success. Once programming was complete, it became clear that none of the locations Lisi had looked at would work, and whole factory would have to be re-stacked, building the new plating building on a parking lot, and then turning the old to parking. In the process, the massive chemical contamination was cleaned up and Lisi got the state-of-the-art automated lines they wanted, including new quality assurance labs. Jack reformulated the project as a development project with a single Contractor. To report to the senior leadership in France, Jack created a world-wide reporting system, for financial and operational aspects of the project. Jack worked with the Federal Aviation Administration, City of Torrance, Sanitation District of LA County, State Water Control Board, LA County FD, and State Air Quality Management District for all the project clearances required. The project was accomplished in 6 phases in order to manage parking, new construction, interim moves, final moves, demolition and environmental cleanup. Jack was able to achieve over seven million is project savings though analysis, bidding, negotiating, and contract management.