Page 28 - BusinessWest August 19, 2024

Principals (from left) Bert Gardner, Curtis Edgin, and Jim Hanifan say Caolo & Bieniek Architects continues to stay busy in the post-pandemic years.
Staff Photo
tect for the past two years, completing a roof and skylight replace- ment for the Department of Public Works, a roof and skylight replacement for the City Hall Annex, a roof replacement for the Holyoke Children’s Museum and Volleyball Hall of Fame, heating upgrades for the McMahon VRF, historical renovations on the City Council chambers located at City Hall, and HVAC system replace- ments in the city’s elementary schools. Most recently, it secured an on-call architect contract for the Holyoke Housing Authority.
“Diversity continues to be there for us,” Roths- child-Shea said, noting that his firm has significant experience in accessibility, historic preservation, educational, and commercial design, as well as both private and multi-family residential develop- ment. “It’s always been competitive, but we haven’t had any trouble with workflow. Word of mouth con- tinues to be one of the strongest methods of obtain- ing new work on the commercial side. It’s evolving work, and we continue to respond to an ever-chang- ing climate.”
Challenges Persist
What hasn’t changed — though they have eased in some ways — are the challenges architects have felt in recent years from supply-chain issues and higher costs.
“It’s a lot less, but there are some elements — like some particular electrical items — that are still causing delays on projects,” said Jim Hanifan, vice president at Caolo & Bieniek. “If we have a big project, a year-plus, everyone knows what materi- als have problems and get them ordered the second
day of the job. The problem is the smaller ones that are only sum- mer jobs; there’s not enough time. You have to pick the materials that you can get. You can’t wait on certain things, or you’ll never get the job done.”
And these are often critical items, he noted. “You can’t have a police station or a fire station without a generator. That’s the kind of thing you’ve got to plan around. Part of the job now is to make sure you can get the materials and get them on time and get them installed and certified, all within a certain time period.”
Another element regarding equipment is how much more com- plicated some of it is, particularly in the energy-efficiency realm, Hanifan said, and clients need to take into account both their bud- get and ease of use.
“It’s evolving work, and we continue to respond to an ever-changing climate.”
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