Provo 4th District Courthouse
Provo, Utah
Award of Merit

Owner: State of Utah DFCM
Lead Design Firm: VCBO Architecture
General Contractor: Okland Construction Corp.
Structural Engineer: Reaveley Engineers + Associates
Civil Engineer: Talisman Civil Consultants
MEP Engineer: Colvin Engineering Associates
Electrical Engineer: Spectrum Engineers

This eight-story courthouse includes 16 courtrooms, offices and judicial spaces, a public lobby, prisoner transport areas, holding cells, space for public services and an elevated plaza designed to encourage public engagement with the facility.

Team members were immediately challenged when they discovered an undrillable layer of 6,000-psi caliche—1 ft to 4 ft thick and approximately 4 ft to 12 ft below grade—beneath the entire building footprint. The layer had to be removed with hydraulic breakers before starting dewatering drilling, mass excavation or geopier installation. However, replacing the caliche with engineering fill allowed the team to reduce the number of geopiers needed by half, helping to mitigate the time and cost of removing the caliche. The team delivered the courthouse nearly three months early and under its original budget.

Back to "Annual Awards Competition Attracts the Most Entries in Its History"