The 41 Infantry Division Armed Forces Reserve Center houses nine Oregon Army National Guard units and eight United States Army Reserve units in a 250,000-square-foot facility.

The center has an auditorium, an assembly hall, physical fitness facilities, classrooms, a firing simulator center, and areas for distance learning, family support and band rehearsal.

Knowing that the center would be so large, the client asked BBL Architects for a “campus-style” center to avoid one big, awkward and ungainly building. However, BBL Architects knew that creating separate buildings would introduce its own challenges, especially where on a campus where movement would be so important.

The design team decided to create an attached campus layout, with variations in roof lines and materials that give the feeling of separate buildings. Meanwhile, the buildings are connected, which makes the center easy to navigate. Windows help people avoid feeling like they are traveling long, uninterrupted corridors.

The building earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating.

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The $79 million expansion of the Tri-City Water Pollution Control Plant in Clackamas County provided a much-needed increase in capacity for water treatment in the region.

The expansion was required to catch up with local population growth by immediately creating more capacity in the water system. But the county’s Water Environment Services added an additional goal – to create a sustainable plant that went above and beyond typical industry standards.

The project needed to be done quickly. Through open communication and partnership, the design and construction teams were able to complete in 10 months a project that typically would require 15.

Fast-tracking a project like plant expansion could have been a tricky proposition, but Slayden Construction and the project team managed the abbreviated schedule by setting up a quality assurance program and keeping lines of communication open between team partners.

Collaboration with local permitting agencies let construction happen on a phased basis, with permits issued for individual parts of the project while design was still under way. Despite the need to move quickly on the project, the design team and client also ran a public outreach program to make sure the project gained support from residents in the area.

Open communication, along with a flexible Construction Manager-General Contractor procurement method, provided the project team flexibility to discover and implement cost-saving measures, which became increasingly important when the county’s Water Environment Services encountered a financial shortfall. By thinking outside the traditional envelope – such as tracking down water treatment technology that could be used in a smaller, scaled-down building – the project team trimmed more than $14 million from the original cost.

The newly expanded facility uses sustainable technologies, including UV disinfection processes, facilities for reuse of water, and recovery of excess heat to be reused as energy elsewhere.

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Before Curry Medical Center was constructed, people in Brookings had to drive an hour to reach the nearest hospital.

Now, however, the community has its own family medical practices, an MRI suite, medical testing facilities, and urgent care and emergency services.

Part of the Curry General Hospital Network, the new, 34,500-square-foot center stands as a landmark on the Southern Oregon Coast, a location that caused more than a few headaches for the project team.

A lack of convenient resources for recycling construction materials required general contractor Todd Construction and the rest of the project team members to find alternative ways to score enough points to qualify the building for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver rating.

The team also combated possible slowdowns caused by severe rainstorms by maintaining a tight schedule throughout the entire project.

The coastal location didn’t pose only challenges, however. It also brought inspiration for Clark/Kjos Architects, leading to a design that incorporates materials, colors and shapes that reflect the natural landscape of the Oregon coast.

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The Jungers Culinary Center serves one of Central Oregon Community College’s most significant programs: the Cascade Culinary Institute.

The new, 15,205-square-foot building is designed to integrate community participation, with open spaces and large windows that let casual visitors experience all that is happening in the classrooms.

The center has spaces that can be used both for classes and the community, including an instructional kitchen, a demonstration theater, a dining lab and a “central hall” that can house art exhibits, culinary demonstrations or casual dining.

Planning for the new building happened at the same time that the college brought in national expertise to redesign its culinary curriculum, so the building itself is a result of the latest national know-how in culinary education.

“Everything is shiny, stainless and state of the art,” said Mark Stoller with Yost Grube Hall Architecture.

The building’s stainless steel underground plumbing was imported from Denmark. Other high-tech features include kitchen hoods that automatically activate depending on the amount of heat and smoke detected by heat sensors and lasers.

About $1 million of the budget was used for site improvements, including roads and utilities. The new building is the first part of a larger development.

Despite frequent weather delays in a seasonally bad winter, HSW Builders completed the Jungers Culinary Center on time. The new building has already hosted a fundraiser for the community college and attracted an increase in enrollment more than 50 percent greater than expected.

The post TopProject: Central Oregon Community College – Jungers Culinary Center submitted by HSW Builders & Yost Grube Hall Architecture appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Crook County’s old fairgrounds is now home to Central Oregon Community College’s high-tech open campus building, designed to provide higher education for local residents.

The new 12,000-square-foot building is the result of a long, collaborative process. Steele Associates Architects gathered input from Central Oregon Community College, Crook County and Oregon State University on every phase of the project, from selection of the site to design of the building’s many features.

The building has classrooms, a computer lab and a teaching kitchen to provide a range of classes. Each classroom is outfitted as a “smart classroom,” with high-tech and multimedia equipment that lets instructors teach in new ways and provides students with convenient and innovative learning technologies.

The building is green as well as high tech, with high-efficiency heating and cooling systems, solar panels for electricity and water-conserving plumbing features.

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The Children’s Center of Clackamas County is a nonprofit organization that provides a safe place for children and families in cases of suspected physical abuse, neglect and endangerment.

For the design and construction teams working on a new, 10,300-square-foot building for the center, the mission of the organization gave the project an added level of significance. P&C Construction site supervisor Randy Peterson was heard telling crews about the center’s mission, saying “You’re building something special. Remember that.”

While the organization’s old building was small and cramped, the new building has plenty of space for exams, interviews and consultation in addition to separate staff work areas. The size and design of the new building is expected to let the center serve quadruple the number of children.

The building was designed to offer a warm, homey space, with skylights, cathedral ceilings and African mahogany – “something special,” indeed.

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The new veterinary medical center at the Oregon Zoo will let professionals provide state-of-the-art care for the animals. Building the high-tech facility was quite a challenge, however, because of a tight site featuring an unstable hillside accessible by just one narrow road.

“We identified this challenge early,” said Jackson Catrett, project manager for general contractor Skanska USA Building.

The lack of easy access to the site meant that deliveries had to be planned carefully and escorted down the 14-foot-wide, 400-foot-long road. Crews working on the project were trained to use open communication and be aware of the location’s complications.

When crews started digging on the site, they ran into another problem – underground utilities were not where existing drawings indicated. Skanska USA turned this challenge into an opportunity by working around the underground obstacles, and at the end of the project the firm provided the zoo with a CAD file of new, accurate surveys of the area.

The building itself was constructed of 115 precast concrete walls. Many of the walls were cast on the building’s small site, but others needed to be delivered and carefully navigated along the narrow road. Despite some tight corners, Skanska USA crews and subcontractors erected the building in eight days with no injuries.

On the inside, the medical center is packed with equipment, including HVAC systems, animal cages, humidifiers and oxygen systems required for complex animal care. Fitting the equipment into the relatively small building required time and coordination. Skanska even assigned a full-time staff person to coordinate only the animal caging.

“It was a tough project, and I think we did really well,” Catrett said.

The post TopProject: Oregon Zoo Veterinary Medical Center submitted by Skanska USA Building appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Mount Hood Community College Early Childhood Center in Gresham is a sustainable new building with multiple purposes. The center offers space for 184 children to participate in Head Start and for 60 adults to receive training while pursuing careers in child care.

The construction of this new building wasn’t a simple task, however. Construction crews had to be careful not to disturb classes and child care on the active campus.

The project team, led by general contractor Walsh Construction, found innovative ways to keep construction and site work on schedule and on budget. Ceilings in the building’s hallways are made of lumber salvaged from the college’s basement. Local high school students made cubbies and benches for the building, using materials paid for by the college.

The resulting 21,000-square-foot center includes classrooms and indoor and outdoor play spaces, as well as a kitchen that will be used to prepare meals for 15 local Head Start programs.

The post TopProject: MHCC Early Childhood Center submitted by Walsh Construction Co. appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Linus Pauling Science Center is the most complex building Oregon State University has built on its Corvallis campus, according to Sherman H. Bloomer, dean of the College of Science. The 105,000-square-foot, $49.9 million building has classrooms, a 180-seat auditorium, and 78 laboratories for disciplines from organic chemistry to laser spectroscopy.

The university singled out Andersen Construction’s dedication to open communication during the project, which included allowing faculty members and other end-users to tour the construction site on a regular basis.

Construction of the large building, however, hit some major obstacles. The building is located within the university’s historic district, so a historic review was required, which led to design changes and caused a three-month delay. The building was constructed on an active campus, and the staging area for construction was limited.

Despite these complications, Andersen Construction delivered the Linus Pauling Science Center on time and ready for use during OSU’s fall semester.

The post TopProject: OSU Linus Pauling Science Center submitted by Andersen Construction Co. & Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When the Port of Newport agreed in 2009 to have a new marine facility ready for NOAA by summer 2011, the agency signed on to what some called an “impossible project.”

“To build a 1,300-foot pier in that time frame is like going from zero to sixty in nothing flat,” said Brad Nile, project manager with Andersen Construction.

Andersen Construction and its partner, West Coast Contractors, didn’t only have to build a pier; they also had to construct an office building worthy of a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver rating and a parking lot. The successful project was made possible by collaboration and a team made up of experts in diverse areas.

West Coast Contractors turned to its experience as a marine contractor to handle construction of the in-water pieces of the operations center. The company’s skill with the complexities of marine construction, including permits and in-water work windows, made that portion go smoothly, Nile said.

“Their planning was really flawless; they knew exactly what to expect,” Nile said.

Engineers from KPFF helped the construction team save time with an idea to pre-cast some of the systems that would go in the water, so construction of structures could happen quickly during the limited time that environmental laws allowed in-water work.

On land, Andersen Construction kept busy with the planned office building. Before construction could begin on that part of the project, crews had to clean up the site, which was an abandoned fish farm littered with in-ground concrete structures. The construction team was able to clean up the site, and even crushed some of the fish farm concrete to use as a base material for the new facility’s parking lot.

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