St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA intended to execute a number of capital improvements to their Historic Sanctuary and Parish Hall, including air conditioning the Parish Hall, renovating the Parish Hall kitchen, structurally evaluating and repairing the fleche (small steeple) as needed, establishing a new sanitary sewer connection, extensive cleaning and restoration of the historic wood and masonry sanctuary interior, historic door and window restoration, exterior stormwater improvements, and campus site lighting. Under Kristopher Powell’s management, the team building process added Studio Agoos Lovera and Delran as trusted partners to assist with assessment, design, and construction of the various scopes of work.
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Philadelphia, PA
The Project
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To mitigate this risk, Kris broke the overall effort into a series of micro-phases, allowing the team to determine and assess risk and cost of each before committing to the next phase. This sequencing strategy allowed St. Paul’s to proceed through the scopes of work without unintentionally committing unavailable resources. Instantaneous analysis of the project budget allowed St. Paul’s to rapidly commit to subsequent stages of work, allowing the project team to stay efficient and mobilized. While a number of unforeseen conditions and strategic decisions based on uncovered problems did lead to cost events, Kris worked with the Church to deprioritize less-critical work to ensure the project stayed on-budget and on-track. Because of the building’s age and complex history of renovations and updates, the project team recognized the potential risk of discovering unforeseen conditions that could consume valuable resources.
Ultimately, successful execution of the first micro-phases and demonstrated stewardship of the historic campus helped St. Paul’s fundraise to complete the full project scope. Interesting problem-solving strategies included the engagement of a Steeplejack – think of a mountain-climbing structural engineer – to save significant resources over the initial plan for structural investigation of the fleche. Though this project was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the improvements greatly improved the comfort, aesthetics, and maintenance of the Church, and led to a significantly improved experience for St. Paul’s parishioners upon their return to worship in 2021. (Completed with Aegis Property Group)
