The third of three office facilities on the campus of First Union Bank, the Three First Union Center is a 38-story, $72 million office tower in mid-town Charlotte, North Carolina. The tower comprises 914,000 square feet of space. First Union Corp., the anchor tenant, occupies 10 floors, approximately 400,000 square feet. The remainder of the building is leased to other tenants.

The structure also offers 925 parking spaces within a seven-level parking deck, five levels of which are below ground. Site improvements also included new and upgraded street work, sidewalks, and a new bank entrance.

Draper & Associates provided both construction schedule development and construction monitoring services during all phases of the project. Draper & Associates conducted bi-weekly update meetings during the construction phase, reviewing progress with the Owner, General Contractor, and all active Subcontractors. Near Term Schedules, detailed day-to-day implementation schedules derived from the Overall Project Schedule, served as the focal point of discussion during the update meetings.

Other supporting tools included the Action Item Agenda, which tracked key decisions and actions; the Trend Analysis Chart, which projected the impact of current progress on overall project completion; and the Material Status Log, which identified the status of key materials.

Draper & Associates' comprehensive scheduling and project controls, along with the General Contractor's estimating team determined cost saving solutions, which led to the ability to contract this clad-in-stone facility within budget. The General Contractor self-performed all the structural concrete work, which, along with the schedule discipline imposed by Draper allowed the very critical occupancy date to be met.