When the planners of Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas were looking to add a pool, they knew their guests were expecting more than just a place to lounge and cool off. It needed to be a truly unique aquatic experience. They wanted a massive, tiered six-pool “stadium seating” flanked by an enormous screen so guests could enjoy being in a pool while watching games and other events, like a sports stadium.
“They needed an organization capable of fabricating maximum-sized pool sections off-site that could be efficiently craned and rigged into a very tight downtown footprint without derailing the construction timeline,” said Mike Sage, vice president of sales and marketing at Bradford Products, a design-build partner for Circa Resort.
Bradford’s fully welded stainless steel pools offered many solutions for Circa’s needs. Stainless steel weighs one-third less than traditional concrete vessels, which significantly decreases a building’s structural requirements, saving headspace, reduces material costs, and simplifies installation. Stainless steel resists weathering and corrosion, and allows for more complex shapes often requested in commercial installations. Vessels are built in-house and then shipped to the site, allowing for faster manufacturing and a reduction in construction delays.
While stainless steel plays an important role for many commercial aquatics spaces, having an integrated design-build partnership provides the competitive advantage for the builder and architect.
In a design-build partnership, the pool manufacturer is in lock step from the project’s inception. Rather than work with a number of consultants and suppliers who are involved at different intervals, a design-build partner is fully embedded with its client through the entire project timeline. This allows the client to stay on budget, on time, and in compliance of safety and codes. The partner will also work closely with various other teams, including landscape design and architects, to help communicate the overall vision of the pool and ensure it is seamlessly incorporated into the project, from the look and feel to the plumbing, equipment, on-site installation, compliance, and final start-up testing and commissioning.
Having a design-build partner reduces miscommunication mishaps that lead to changes in cost. In some cases, a revision or addition to a space may not be communicated to other critical teams until much later, which can impact the cost and timeline. “A decision made in a vacuum could also inadvertently add weeks or months to your process for corrections in other areas,” Sage said. “Real-time design-build partnership helps avoid those trickle-down implications.” This helps organize the requirements for all parties involved before anything has been even committed to paper. And because the partner has first-hand knowledge from the pool’s perspective, it can propose alternatives that minimizes or eliminates hand-off risks.
This is even more critical in complicated engineering situations, which frequently occurs on buildings that host rooftop pools or multiple vessels throughout the building, such as the Turnberry Ocean Club Residences in Sunny Isles, Florida. The developers wanted 29 vessels, including two pools and two hot tubs on the roof of the 54-story building. “Bradford’s stainless steel vessels, which have fully welded construction, provided the leak-proof reliability required to protect the 154 luxury residential units below,” Sage said. The design-build partnership also ensured regular communication, coordination, and shared expectations from idea inception to final installation.
Even if the developers start with an outside designer, a design-build partner such as Bradford can step in at any moment and see the project through. “If an outside aquatic designer brings them pool plans, they can serve as the engineering, fabrication, and installation partner,” Sage said. “You’re not losing any consistency or accuracy when the process is transferred to another trade, group, expert, consultant or contractor.”
For more information, visit Bradford Products.