Romtec designs, supplies, and constructs many types of buildings and structures for projects all across the United States. On many projects, Romtec will only provide design and supply services, while construction is handled by a local bidding contractor. These projects go very smoothly because Romtec packages all of our building materials into staged pallets. One recent project required an extra level of detailed packaging because of its remote location. This project was for the Catalina Island Conservancy on Santa Catalina Island in California. Packaging each building for delivery to a small island required that every package comprised all of the necessary building materials for this project.
The Scope and Design Features of the Catalina Island Restrooms
The total scope of this project included 5 waterless restroom buildings to be installed along 27 miles of newly developed hiking trails. The buildings include single units and two room units, and each building included a covered entryway. Due to the remote installation locations, the Catalina Island Conservancy included glass privacy blocks into some of the exterior walls of the restroom buildings. The glass blocks provide ample natural lighting for the restrooms without requiring electricity. This design feature also adds a great aesthetic to the buildings with a little style to the rustic buildings.
Providing the Building Package
Santa Catalina Island is located over 25 miles off the coast of California, and it offers only a single small port town called Avalon. Many of the supplies on the island are shipped there, making getting replacements difficult. This is where the expertise and experience of Romtec is extremely valuable. The Romtec design and supply process was developed so that public entities and all types of customers could procure buildings and structures that were designed to meet their specific preferences without having to pay an independent architect. Romtec, instead, typically sells the building package to the awarded contractor and acts as a supplier.
The Building Installation of Romtec Supplied Buildings
On this project, the Catalina Island Conservancy is a private non-profit organization. As such, they were able to buy all five buildings directly from Romtec. They opted to use a familiar contractor, Jordahl Construction, for the installation. Jordahl Construction has worked in Avalon and across the Santa Catalina Island for over 30 years, making them a great option for the installation of these buildings. The Catalina Island Conservancy preferred to have all five buildings shipped on a single shipment. In addition to expert packaging, Romtec also needed to handle freight logistics to have all of the building packages arrive together without mixing up any of the pieces and parts.
At Romtec, each building is palletized in stages. The pallets start with the primary construction materials and end with accessories and finishing materials. In addition to the staging of each building, the pallets for this project were each labeled in several locations to identify the specific building package. This made it easy for all five buildings to show up to the shipping yard, get loaded, and arrive on the island to be transported to the final installation location of each building.
Romtec packages our building supplies for every project, including the projects that we construct. With packaged buildings, the construction process is faster and typically experiences fewer issues that can result in delays or change orders. Utilizing this approach has been very successful for entities like the USFS, NPS, USACE, and others that require restrooms in remote locations. To learn more about our package building or our design-build projects, contact Romtec today!
