Both construction sites are in remote areas, requiring extensive local hiring in conjunction with 20-year Native American-owned partner Arviso Construction of Iyanbito, N.M. "We reach out to the community and have been very successful in finding the people we need," Kubricky says.

Community Outreach

Community involvement is an essential Okland component. The company worked with longtime client Target Corp., Minneapolis, to donate construction services for two elementary school library makeovers in Mesa, Ariz., and Salt Lake City.

Recently, Okland increased its involvement with Arizona Brainfood, which supplies meals for underprivileged children at Title I schools. "These are children who, without these package bags of food on Friday afternoon, would come back to school starving on Monday morning," Okland says. Okland's wife, Kaci, serves on the nonprofit's board.

Okland asserts that his firm's relationships with community service organizations and building partners strengthened Okland during the recession and created the foundation for its revenue surge last year.

Upcoming work includes the 130,000-sq-ft ASU Block 12, which is scheduled to begin construction under a $35-million contract in January 2013. The 56,000-sq-ft Maricopa City Complex, about 30 miles from Phoenix, begins construction this month and will be completed in October 2013.

Both projects were designed by San Francisco-based Gensler, with Block 12 in partnership with Architekton.

"Working with Okland has truly been an interactive, collaborative process that has served our clients extremely well," says Jay Silverberg, principal of the Phoenix office of Gensler.

The Maricopa project involves a tight municipal budget and high client and community expectations, Silverberg says. "Okland's creative cost-saving strategies helped our team to bring in the [guaranteed maximum price] within the proposed city's budget while maintaining extraordinary quality."