Lebanon, Tennessee
City of Lebanon
The Lebanon Fire Department was looking for a contractor to handle a simultaneous double build: a renovation of their headquarters, and a brand-new second station. And the headquarters had to remain fully functional during the entire remodeling process.
The Lebanon Fire Department wanted to undertake a complicated major building project: the renovation of their headquarters station and a brand-new station. So after reviewing contractor bids, rather than automatically going with the lowest bidder, the city awarded the job to Carden, based on a reputation for professionalism and organization and prior experience with complex projects.
The two jobs proved to be good tests for our reputation.
“On Station #2 – the new fire station – the site conditions were bad to start with,” said project Architect Jeff Hall of the Hall Group. “It was a mud field basically, so Carden had some site issues at the beginning to compensate for.”
But as the recently-retired Fire Chief Wayne Driver recalled, “For Station 2, we could start from scratch, and other than weather, that wasn’t too bad.”
The bigger challenge was the headquarters station – Station #1. Fire Chief Wayne Driver explained how they made it work, “We had to basically cordon the building off into 2 separate sections. We were able to move the living quarters to the office side, so the builders could do their work and we could keep the station running.”
But beyond managing the space for the men and trucks to operate, there was the issue of keeping the headquarters connected throughout construction: “The biggest problem was we had our communications system that we had to keep up and running,” said Fire Chief Driver.
“And when we made the swap for our office from one side to the other, the changeover for our communications had to be done seamlessly: shut it down on one side and open it up on the other in a matter of minutes. And it worked great!”
It was a big project – with lots of complications – but afterwards both the architect and owner had praise for Carden Company’s work. Architect Hall commented, “Everything they’re doing, as far as what I’ve been involved with, has gone smoothly. They are very, very professional; very friendly; very client-oriented.”
And Fire Chief Driver said, “They were good about keeping me up-to-date on things, and when there were problems, they got with us early enough to figure out a solution – and they’d come up with options for solutions to choose from. I was well satisfied with Carden Company.”
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