Once occupied by one of Winter Park, Florida’s earliest
residents, James Seymour Capen, the majestic Capen
House, originally built in 1885, was set to be demolished
so buyers could build on its land. Luckily, its new owners decided to give preservationists, who were eager to
see the home saved, time to create a plan and raise funds
to move the historic house across Lake Osceola. To save
the 200-ton historic house, the group of preservationists
moved it across the lake in two separate pieces, to where
it could rest next to the Albin Polasek Museum.
To accomplish this construction feat, contractor
Frank Roark acted almost as a conductor of a symphony
composed of moving, interdependent parts. Each part
of this seemingly impossible project had to be broken
down into small, achievable tasks and sequenced in
a way that made logical sense. During a 2013 radio
interview with Mr. Roark, the project’s chief contractor
described the intricacies of the complex project by stating that there were “complicating, challenging factors
that add to the excitement and fun of the whole thing.”
During the interview, Mr. Roark described the
scope of the project work in great detail. He started
by explaining how the team would assemble a barge
large enough to transport the house. Additionally, he
discussed the preparation of the historic Capen House
along with its original fixtures:
“Well, what we do is we have to assemble the barge, the
barge is big, it’s going to have to be 40 feet by 60 feet
and so you can’t just come up with a 40 foot by 60 foot
barge, truck it into town, and roll it to the dock. So the
way it’s done is the barge is comprised of individual
smaller barges that are typically 10 feet wide and 20
or 40 feet long. Those are brought in on flatbed trucks
brought down onto the property, dragged down onto
the lake into the water, and then another piece and another piece. Those pieces are pinned together to form a
large raft. And you can keep adding those individual
pieces until you get a large barge as long as you need
to carry the weight of a house. The way that the house
is calculated and by knowing what it’s made out of and
the sizes, and so, the barge is assembled and then a
couple of small motor boats, one in the front and one in
the back, pull and push it slowly across the lake over to
where the house is currently located. It comes up to the
shore and then a ramp is built from the barge up onto
the shore, obviously a strong ramp. Then the house has
to be cut into two pieces because the lot is very narrow
down by the lake and the constraints of some existing
trees and another building makes it such that the house
would not fit between them in one piece. So we have
to cut the house in half into two pieces, and we will
move each piece one at a time up on wheeled dollies,
roll it down to the lake, roll it over the ramp, onto the
barge, and then the barge will be motored across the
lake where each half will be brought to its eventual resting place. That process is repeated for the second half.”
The interviewer continued to ask Mr. Roark about
the work required to prepare the other side of the lake
where the Capen House would reside once it had been
moved. Mr. Roark described a ramp that had to be
assembled on that side of the lake as well:
“The ramp has to be assembled again on the other side
to allow the house to roll off because the barge, although
it only drops about 3-3.5 feet of water, it can’t just literally go right onto the shore. It can stop pretty close, but
there’s going to be some gap there that has to be bridged
with the ramp, the ramp has to be wide enough and
strong enough that a hundred tons for half of the house
can roll over and head up, go on up the property.
Finally, Mr. Roark described the delivery of the
house to its final resting place:
“It’s done with some heavy equipment that is, would
be, in front of the house, and these would be tow trucks
and they have winches on them, and steel cables are
taken down to the house and imagine if you would
like a wagon where you would hold the handle and
you would pull the wagon. Well, the house will have
a couple of connecting points and the steel cables will
go to that the steel beams of the house are actually sitting on. And they will go back up to these tow vehicles,
which are anchored in place by some heavy front-end
loaders so that those don’t slip down towards the house.
And so those things start winching the house forward
and the house up on wheeled dollies so it starts rolling
slowly but it does, it rolls forward. So it’s slowly pulled
or winched forward and then as it gets closer to the
winches, those are then moved further up the hill and
the process is repeated where it is winched along a little
bit at a time until it gets to the final destination.
Last, but not least, Mr. Roark shared the fact that
there were also two obstacles on the lake front of the
resting place for the Capen House that had to be handled with considerable care: “And, there’s also a large dock and boat house down
on the lake exactly where the barge has to go and where
the house has to roll through it. So we have to take the
boat house and the dock and put them on it, their own
little barge, cut them loose, float them off to the side
out of the way, so that we can make way for the large
barge and the ramp and the house to roll onto it. And
once those house pieces are moved and out of the way
we have to float the boat house and the dock and put it
right back in the original position.”
There is certainly no doubt that it took a wellorchestrated team of dedicated individuals to make this
move happen. Once the house was delivered across the
lake and reassembled, it was restored into the beautiful
historic venue it is today. This construction feat resulted
in an admirable transformation: a charming public event
space for the Winter Park community to appreciate for
many years to come.12
Questions
1. Based on the work described by Frank Roark in
his radio interview, construct a list of project work
activities with IDs, descriptions, and predecessor
tasks.
2. Construct an AON network diagram for the activities required to complete the Capen House move.
Be sure to visualize the interdependencies of the
work tasks and to follow network diagramming
conventions.
3. Identify concurrent, merge, and burst activities
and explain the impact of convergences upon the
project planning process.
4. If you were the project manager for moving the
Capen House, what are some of the scheduling
challenges you might anticipate with this project
based upon your network diagram? How would
you ensure project success?
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