Cold buildings, hot prices.
Brightway wants to replace three aging freezer warehouses with one automated hub that holds 80,000 pallet positions at –10°F. Two earlier bids came in 30% over budget, and the automated storage system has a 14-month lead time of its own.
- 80,000pallet positions at –10°F
- 30%over budget on the first two bids
- 14 molead time on the automated racking
Cold storage is unforgiving: the insulated envelope, under-slab heating and refrigeration plant make up more than half the cost, and a mistake in any of them shows up as ice heave years later. Brightway needed a builder that could price those systems honestly at concept stage and design the building around the automation, not the other way around.
We were brought in under a pre-construction services agreement in early 2026, with a target to reach a GMP the board could approve before the end of the year.
Price the cold first, then the box.
Our estimating team built the budget from the inside out — refrigeration and automation first, envelope second, shell last — with monthly cost reports to Brightway’s board.
- 01
Rethink the refrigeration
Swapping a central ammonia plant for a low-charge packaged system cut the mechanical budget by $7.9M and removed a full permitting track.
- 02
Design around the racks
We locked the automated racking layout first, which set column spacing and let the structure shrink by 1,900 tons of steel.
- 03
Buy the long leads
The racking and insulated panels go out on early-release packages this winter so the 18-month build starts with them already in production.