Project of the Month: Pugliese Contracting Corp. leads 38,000 s/f construction of new Eliza Corp. headquarters - designed by McMahon Architects

Eliza Corp. has brought its passion and energy to its new 38,000 s/f corporate headquarters located at 75 Sylvan St., owned and managed by Beverly based Brookwood Financial Partners, LLC. For many years, the 75 Sylvan St. complex was formerly home to light bulb manufacturing giant, Sylvania. The property has been developed by Brookwood Financial, and it has been converted into an office complex offering the unique balance of a professional office building in the shell of an old factory. With the 25 foot ceilings and the exposed 100 foot trusses, Eliza knew immediately they had found their new home. Brookwood was represented by Matt Daniels, senior vice president of brokerage with Colliers International. Eliza was represented by Rob Cronin, vice president of Lincoln Property Company. Eliza leads the market in health engagement management - providing integrated healthcare communication strategies, analytics, and business intelligence to major healthcare organizations. Eliza's technology and data-driven approaches are designed to engage people in conversation, improve their health, and enhance their quality of life. Eliza knew it needed a new space - one that would reflect the technology-heavy yet collaborative culture of this quickly growing company. The real challenge was to find a suitable location that could offer Eliza a modern, slightly unconventional work environment in an appropriate professional setting. The Eliza project team was led by Beth Sarni, vice president and asset manager for Brookwood. The team was a partnership assembled by Sarni which included Pugliese Contracting, a self-performing general contractor serving New England, and Boston based design firm, McMahon Architects. The plan developed offered Eliza multi-functional meeting, collaboration and work spaces with the flexibility to grow. It was critical to the Eliza management team that all employees have ample natural light and a healthy work environment. McMahon responded with a central core of interior offices facing the 14 foot tall window walls present on 3 sides of the new space. This preserved space along the window line for workstations broken into small clusters and organized in close proximity to ample meeting and informal collaboration spaces. The next challenge ahead lay in the expedited project schedule. In just a few short months, the construction team, led by Tom Murray of Pugliese, High Tech Electric, Bilo Plumbing and heating and Accutemp Engineering, Inc. put there expertise in designing the mechanical components of this project. Highlighted was a network operations center as well as there IT/computer server room - the core and heart of the company's operation. Relying on the expertise, High-Tech Electric's president, Mike Pallazolla worked closely with Eliza's corporate IT manager, Duane Elbrecht to develop a power plan and a cable management system to house the IT wiring infrastructure that would allow information technology systems both critical and non-critical, to be operated with-out worry of a power loss. A 150KW roof top mounted natural gas generator with the welded steel piping performed by Bilo integrated a 50 KVA UPS designed as part of this state of the art tenant electric room. Combined with the necessary designed loads of the HVAC cooling systems designed by Bob Clark of Accu-temp engineering it provides a seamless transition between normal and back up power systems that will allow Eliza to operate at full capacity with-out interruption at the same time protecting the equipment from overheating in both the NOC room and IT/Server room. This allows Eliza to securely and closely monitor every detail of its operation reaching across the country. With the help of Fox RPM Corp.'s senior construction project manager, Jim McCaffery, the tenants representative put his experience, excellence, innovation and creativity to work for Eliza to save from costly mistakes and navigating the critical construction timeline to coordinate the full construction of the new interior spaces, electrical, mechanical and fire protection systems. This allowed Pugliese Contracting to execute and meet the aggressive deadline on time and on budget. Eliza employees are enjoying making this new space their own - the floor plan encourages chance meetings and the infusion of natural light energizes teams all day long. Clients are wowed when they walk in the door. Old traditions have found a home here, too - the bright new break room is the perfect setting for Eliza's long-standing Friday evening tradition of getting colleagues together to wind down and relax. Project Team includes: Owner: Brookwood Properties General Contractor: Pugliese Contracting Architect: McMahon Architects Electrical Contractor: High Tech Electric HVAC Contractor: Accu-temp Engineering Plumbing Contractor: Bilo Plumbing & Heating Sprinkler Contractor: Masse Fire Protection Broker: Colliers International