Thirty-two stories above downtown Nashville, 601 Lafayette put Power Design's multi-trade model to the test, proving what a single-trade sub simply can't deliver. See how our team is coming together to bring 601 Lafayette to life from concept to completion.
Joshua Taylor, our mechanical superintendent on the project, has spent three decades in the trade. “I started in this trade in 1996,” he says. “So that makes 30 years now that I've been doing heat and air conditioning work, mechanical work.” That depth shows up in how the crew works, not just what it builds. “We look at the project together,” Taylor says. “We look ahead, and collectively things pop out at us. We look for problems before we get to them, and we want to fix them before they become expensive.”
That mindset was tested early and often at 601 Lafayette. The design called for horizontal exhaust, including dryer venting and stair pressurization relief, to run straight through slot openings built into the window wall glazing, with no ductwork breaking the glass line. Getting there took custom detailing and direct coordination with the Authority Having Jurisdiction, confirming the design met code without sacrificing window height.
The refrigerant risers told a similar story. As unit layouts shifted late in design, our engineers moved the vertical piping into four consolidated, two-hour-rated shafts: a change that also future-proofed the building ahead of the industry's shift to A2L refrigerants.
A third-party smoke control analysis called for an unusual pressure-relief riser most high-rises never need. Five levels of underground parking demanded a serious exhaust strategy, and tight property lines forced every bit of garage and generator ventilation onto just two faces of the building.
Each of those is its own engineering challenge. Solving all of them on one job, without missing a beat, is the multi-trade difference.
Cameron Blevins, superintendent for Layton Construction, has seen that difference from the other side of the table. “Having a multi-trade contractor on site has many benefits,” Blevins says. “Having mechanical and electrical both on the same site, they can work together, come up with solutions all at the same place. So we don't have to make several phone calls to different contractors. We can just fix the problem right then and there.”
It's not just speed. Blevins points to something less common among mechanical contractors: in-house engineering. “One thing unique about them is just the way that they come to an issue that we find on site,” he says. “They come to it with a solution. A lot of people, they want to send it back to the design team. With Power Design, they are the design team. They have that all in-house. They come to the problem, they see it, and they have a plan already in place because they've seen it before.”
That combination of deep mechanical expertise, a full engineering team in-house, and a crew willing to own a problem instead of routing it back to someone else is what Taylor is proudest of on this project. “We come into this project as a mechanical crew at an unknown quantity,” he says. “And now we've made our customer happy, and they've hired us to go on to the next project.” Blevins backs that up from the GC's side: “They've really shown their skill. They've shown their coordination. They've shown that they can do what they say that they can do. They actually showed up and were able to achieve that goal.”
601 Lafayette is proof that Power Design's multi-trade model is a way of solving problems before they arise, in-house, without a single phone call lost in translation. It's also one more piece of the Nashville skyline that Power Design is proud to have helped build.