UW Mercer Court

Mercer Court is a 468,240 SF five-building student housing complex on a five-acre site on the University of Washington campus. The buildings hold 1,350 beds, with apartment-style units and diverse amenity spaces for a full campus experience.

Design time was critical with such a large project, and so was the schedule. We produced complex bid documents in five successive stages, allowing work to bid and begin while design continued, even splitting single scopes into multiple contracts. This allowed design to continue after construction began, relieving pressure on the design team while still meeting the owner’s occupancy schedule.

Our careful evaluation of soils reports allowed us to develop cost-effective recommendations for excavation and sitework that saved over $1,000,000 on this portion of the work.

Late in the design process, we were able to rework the construction schedule to provide two additional months of design time. This allowed well-coordinated MEP documents to be issued for bidding without delaying the project completion date.