Contracting Engineers, Inc.

La Paz Plaza, Mission Viejo, California is a business and retail center redevelopment project. The improvements were made to accommodate medical practice tenants and additional office space for lease and a new restaurant all of which demands additional parking space than what was currently available on the site. There is a relatively wide utility easement between the property and a year round flowing wet lands area down slope from the Plaza. The developer decided to purchase the property, build additional offices, a restaurant facility and an access road within the areas that did not conflict with or obstruct access for the utilities to make repairs to their buried pipes and facilities. Directly above the utilities a parking lot was built to accommodate the expanded use of the Plaza. CEI supplied extensive preconstruction constructibility and value engineering services to the owner during the design phase of the project.

The working conditions were confined to a small area having access challenges with very high volumes of pedestrian traffic during construction. Extensive grading was necessary prior to constructing the foundations that support the building and access road to provide utility access in the event the utilities needed to excavate adjacent the structures to make repairs. The remedial grading, dirt import for fill and fine grading work had to be done carefully not to damage numerous sewer and water lines within the easement and a shallow 30” water transmission line immediately adjacent the permanent facilities. CEI surgically graded foundation pads and subcontracted out the concrete cast in place piles for the building and retaining walls. CEI installed the new sewer, water and drainage facilities as the foundation and retaining wall construction were being constructed.

  
  
  
  

Once retaining walls were finished CEI backfilled them, then proceeded to fine grade the site for curbs, gutters, sidewalks and the sub grade for those trades performing their work. CEI preformed as a subcontractor on this project, performing the grading, underground wet utilities and the concrete cast in place foundation piles, which was subcontracted to a contractor specializing in foundation work.

We faced many obstacles during this project. All of our trade and construction management resources were challenged in our contribution in successfully completing this project.