Denver’s SLATERPAULL Architects has been named Green Business of the Year by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce. The award was presented to the firm at the 2013 Business Award luncheon on April 26. SLATERPAULL specializes in educational environments and historic preservation projects with a focus on sustainable design. “This is quite an honor,” said Jamie Pedler, president and CFO of SLATERPAULL Architects. “We want to thank all of the employees of SLATERPAULL. It’s really their commitment and dedication to sustainability that has truly made us successful.”In addition to the firm’s overall sustainability philosophy, SLATERPAULL has been recognized for the
Shaffer • Baucom Engineering & Consulting is celebrating its 15-year anniversary. The Lakewood, Colo.-based engineering firm was founded to provide engineering and consulting services to institutional, industrial, federal and commercial clients. SBEC specializes in the areas of health care, higher education, K-12 education, aerospace, industrial and science and technology facilities design. Prominent SBEC projects over the last 15 years include Boulder Community Foothills Hospital, the first hospital in the nation to achieve a LEED rating (Silver); University of Colorado at Boulder, Indoor Practice Facility Renovation and Addition (achieved LEED Platinum in 2011); Colorado School of Mines Brown Hall and Mining
Just over two weeks after a landslide sent 165 million tons of earth down into the world’s largest open-pit copper mines located west of Salt Lake City, covering portions of the floor up to 300 ft deep, mine officials will be allowed a closer look at the damage. The Mine Safety and Health Administration recently cleared geologists and engineers from Rio Tinto’s Kennecott Utah Copper to enter the massive slide area in the Bingham Canyon mine. Photo courtesy of Kennecott An April 10 landslide sent 165 million tons of earth down into the worlds largest open-pit copper mine west of
Denver’s Mortenson Construction marked completion of the concrete and steel-frame construction of the Exempla Saint Joseph replacement hospital with a topping-out ceremony at the jobsite in Denver on April 18. Photo courtesy of Mortenson Construction The 831,327-sq-ft, eight-story replacement hospital will be a full-service facility with 348 patient beds. The new Saint Joseph replacement hospital is located adjacent to the current hospital campus east of downtown. The 831,327-sq-ft facility will be a full-service hospital housing all standard-care departments and services. The facility is being built to accommodate 348 patient beds and has a freestanding central utility plant that will serve
Public-private partnerships (P3s) have burst onto the scene in the U.S. as a solution to help meet the overwhelming need for public infrastructure and the underwhelming public resources to pay for it. P3s, of course, are hardly new. Private funding sources have been used for decades to develop major infrastructure and social assets in Europe, Asia and Latin America. In the last decade, P3s have become common in Canada, and they were utilized in the U.S. in the 1970s to develop post offices. In many cases, these privately financed assets are well timed, developed and operated.They can also provide a
Prices for construction materials were flat in March, as plunging diesel fuel and metals prices offset increases in items used in new housing and nonresidential building renovations, according to a recent analysis of new federal figures released by the Associated General Contractors of America. “Thanks to a recent, sharp drop in diesel fuel prices last month—along with continuing declines in steel, copper and aluminum prices—overall construction costs were unchanged from February and up only 0.9% over the past year,” said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the construction trade association. “However, building contractors had to absorb another month of increases in
Thirty-eight percent of highway contractors had motor vehicles crash into their construction work zones during the past year, according to the results of a new highway work-zone study conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials added that the study found work-zone crashes are more likely to kill vehicle operators and passengers than construction workers. “Any time your jobsite is just a few feet away from fast-moving traffic, danger is never far away,” said Mike Hoover, chair of the association’s national highway and transportation division and executive vice president of Tempe, Ariz.-based Sundt Construction. “When you see construction
Public-private partnerships are alive and thriving in Colorado because of leadership from the Colorado Dept. of Transportation, the Regional Transportation District and the City and County of Denver. P3 projects benefit from Colorado’s Integrated Project Delivery statute, which was enacted in 2007 and permits all state agencies, municipalities and special districts to deliver capital projects through any combination of design, demolition, construction, operation, maintenance and finance. CDOTCDOT’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise (HPTE), under the leadership of Director Mike Cheroutes, is expanding the Boulder Turnpike (U.S. 36) on a P3 basis. The turnpike originally opened in 1951 as a four-lane divided
Broomfield, Colo.-based MWH, the wet infrastructure design firm and provider of strategic consulting, environmental, engineering and construction services, has opened an office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The office will serve as a hub for construction and engineering professionals and an administrative staff who will support MWH’s efforts in Africa. Since the 1970s, MWH has helped Ethiopia with water- and energy-related challenges. In 1998 MWH was selected by the Ethiopia Electric Power Corp. as owner’s engineers for the Tekeze Hydropower Project in northern Ethiopia. The $350-million, government-funded project–and tallest arch in Africa at 188 meters high—was completed in 2009 and
Loveland, Colo.-based developer McWhinney plans to begin construction later this month on its fifth multifamily project, Arbour Commons, in Westminster. The official groundbreaking will take place in May. Arbour Commons is the second multifamily project developed by McWhinney at the Orchard Town Center, a master-planned community located off I-25 and 144th Avenue. Arbour Commons will be north of Arbour Square Apartments, a 300-unit McWhinney multifamily project that opened in fall 2011.Arbour Commons plans to offer 394 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartment homes. All will feature energy-efficient floor plans. “The market has responded well to Arbour Square, and as vacancy rates continue
RSS