Walls & Ceilings Architect/January 2008

“There was a very tight schedule for the project, and we completed all the work on the Resort and Residence towers in about nine months,” said Jorge Angel, who owns the ﬁ rm with his wife and the firm’s chief ﬁ nancial ofﬁ cer, Lina. The Angels started the company, which specializes only in EIFS, in 1992, then started work in the Bahamas in 1998. In 2002 they began working exclusively on Caribbean Islands, concentrated on the Bahamas, Bermuda, Trinidad, and Tobago. Today, Lina boasts conﬁdently that Applitech has worked on most major hotel projects in Nassau and the rest of the Bahamas. Applitech is able to land these signiﬁcant jobs year after year,” Lina said, “because we make it look easy.”Applitech was responsible for EIFS in the most recent construction at the Atlantis complex, which is a partnership between Kerzner International Limited and Turnberry Associates. The 23-story Residences at Atlantis is an exclusive condominium-hotel, with 495 units comprised of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom suites. The Cove Atlantis features one-, two-, and three-bedroom suites as well as multiple pools and restaurants. Aside from the massive size of the project--it required more than 800,000 square feet of EIFS--Angel had to deal with a variety of challenges most contractors stateside never have to worry about: • Hurricanes and high winds are quite common throughout the Caribbean and safety precautions always require the removal of scaffolding. • All materials had to be shipped ﬁrst to Miami, then packed into containers and sent by boat to the island. • There was very little space on the job site, and that decreased signiﬁcantly after the ﬁ rst half of the project was ﬁ nished. • The availability of skilled labor is always an issue on the islands, and this factor alone disqualiﬁes many subcontractors on the islands. VALUE ENGINEERING Although most major projects in the islands are covered in EIFS, Lina Angel said, “sometimes the architect has speciﬁed stucco,” and they usually change their speciﬁcations after learning about the alternative. “We also do stucco,” she explained. “But we do some ‘value engineering’ with the architect. It’s much better to use EIFS than stucco for a lot of reasons. The maintenance is easier, there’s a lot less labor involved, and in this area (the Caribbean), laborers do not do January 2008 | Walls & Ceilings Architect | 21

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Walls & Ceilings Architect/January 2008

Walls & Ceilings Architecture/January 2008 Contents Trade News Special Spec Sheet Section Making EIFS Look Easy ICFs Convert Greenbuild '08 The Finish Line Cracking the Code

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