A consortium of major national contractors on Monday will launch the inaugural Construction Inclusion Week to fight racism and other forms of discrimination.

In Portland, Mortenson Construction and Turner Construction are taking part. Each day, curriculum will focus on a specific topic.

The Time for Change consortium grew out of social unrest last year, said Dan Mehls, vice president and general manager of Mortenson‘s Portland office.

“First of all, it’s just the right thing to do,” he said. “Our society is changing. Our country truly is a melting pot.”

Contractors must also be responsive to their increasingly diverse customer base, Mehls said.

“On the business side, the face of our customers is changing,” he said. “To relate to our customers we have to be more diverse and inclusive.”

The curriculum topics are:

• Monday: leadership commitment and accountability
• Tuesday: unconscious bias
• Wednesday: supplier diversity
• Thursday: establishing and maintaining a positive jobsite culture
• Friday: community engagement and philanthropy

The other members of the Time for Change consortium are Gilbane, DPR Construction, McCarthy Building Companies and Clark Construction Group. The group’s work adds to local efforts, including the Safe From Hate campaign that was initiated after a noose was discovered at a construction site at Portland State University.

Supporting diversity and inclusion requires ongoing effort, Mehls said.

“Nobody changes their bias or their mind overnight,” he said. “It takes multiple conversations and perspectives and experiences for people to change their thinking, and we understand that.”

Mehls compared the diversity push to the decades-long effort to elevate safety as a primary goal at jobsites. A century ago, deaths at construction sites were expected and funeral costs were factored into bids, he said.

“It’s been a long journey for our industry for many decades to understand that it’s not OK to hurt anybody on a jobsite,” he said.

Likewise, Mehls said, “it’s not OK to be disrespectful based on people’s race or colors or perspectives. Everybody should be heard, and not just the loud voices. Sometimes it’s the quiet voices.”

More information and materials are available at .

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Facebook is addressing the construction industry’s skilled labor shortage one data center at a time.

Following completion of two successful pilot programs, the tech company expanded its Hardhat in Hand job training program nationwide. One such program started in Prineville earlier this week in partnership with Central Oregon Community College (COCC) and Fortis Construction.

Thirteen people are participating in the eight-week training program. The first four weeks will be classroom instruction (provided by COCC) that covers construction basics such as using math and reading blueprints. Then participants will receive on-site training in the trade of their choice. Those who successfully complete the course will be offered a job with the general contractor or subcontractor with which they trained.

Facebook has active, multiyear data center construction projects under way in several states, said Amber Tillman, community development manager for the company. The work requires thousands of workers, so the hope is that Hardhat in Hand helps meet that need and increase the construction industry workforce.

So far, 30 to 35 participants have completed the program, Tillman estimated.

One participant, April Beatty, 44, completed Hardhat in Hand over the summer with Turner Construction in New Albany, Ohio. She had worked in a glass factory for some time before deciding to make a career change. Then, while talking to a friend in the construction industry, Beatty learned about the Hardhat in Hand program. She said she had seen construction workers driving nice cars and working consistently.

“I started asking questions about the trades,” Beatty said. “How do you get in? Do you have to buy a seat? I had a lot of questions because that isn’t information people just know.”

Though a switch to construction meant taking a pay cut initially, the industry aligned with her goals for dependable employment and higher wages eventually, she said.

The eight-week program is paid. However, it’s typically minimum wage – depending on the location, Tillman said.

No previous construction experience is required for someone to apply for Hardhat in Hand, Tillman said. Participants must be age 18 or older, possess photo identification and a high school diploma (or GED equivalent), and live close to the site location.

“I had some doubts and some thoughts that maybe I am too old, and I am a woman,” Beatty said. “There was a lot of factors that go out on a limb.”

However, participation was a supportive experience, she added.

After completing the program, Beatty entered a pre-apprenticeship with the subcontractor she trained under – Cupertino Electric.

Hardhat in Hand might be less exploratory than other workforce trainings, but its focus is really on the career path, said Tim Johnson, workforce development manager for Fortis Construction.

Prior to the program’s start in Prineville, officials offered a series of information sessions (with representatives of various trade partners present) in Central Oregon. Individuals could select a path they wanted to pursue, Johnson said, and then interview with the corresponding trade partner working on the data center. Those subcontractors then essentially became sponsors of Hardhat in Hand participants, he added.

If participants experience any issues like car trouble, insufficient gas money or a lack of appropriate work clothes, program partner East Cascades Works (Worksource East Cascades) is available to help.

The construction industry hasn’t done a great job of promoting itself to a diverse population in the past two decades, Johnson said. Now Central Oregon is seeing a construction boom, so finding skilled labor has been a challenge, he added.

“We’re just really excited for this launch and these 13 folks getting this opportunity,” he said.

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By Brian Johnson

91��Ƶ Newswire

Mortenson Construction is part of a major push ramping up this fall to promote diversity in construction, an initiative inspired in part by the national reckoning following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Mortenson is a founding member of the Time for Change consortium, which aims to advance “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the industry and ensure that job sites are free of “harassment, hate or bigotry of any kind.”

The consortium boasts some of the biggest names in the U.S. construction industry. Besides Mortenson, founding members are Gilbane Building Co.; Redwood, California-based DPR Construction; New York-based Turner Construction Co.; St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos.; and Bethesda, Maryland-based Clark Construction Group.

Time for Change plans to launch its “Construction Inclusion Week” this fall. As part of the event, scheduled for Oct. 18-22, the group encourages all contractors to organize diversity-related activities and explore topics such as unconscious bias and job site culture.

Also up for discussion are themes that include “leadership commitment and accountability for diversity, equity and inclusion; supplier diversity; and community outreach,” according to the consortium.

Dan Johnson, president and CEO of Mortenson, said the group was formed last year after construction executives from across the country gathered to discuss an effort to attract young people to careers in building-related fields.

A seminal moment came after the CEO of Turner Construction pulled Johnson aside and said there was another topic he wanted to discuss.

“It was shortly after George Floyd’s murder,” Johnson said. “And the topic was, ‘What are we going to do as an industry to improve? How do we take the momentum that’s currently being created in society and apply it to our industry?”

Like most industries, construction “needs to advance in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Johnson added. “But I think construction in particular has some unique challenges in that area. And so, from that, we formed an alliance called Time for Change.”

Time for Change isn’t alone in calling for more diversity and inclusion in construction.

The Associated General Contractors of America went down a similar path with the recent launch of its  program, which aims to ensure that “every employee, from the CEO to the laborer, has the opportunity to feel valued, respected and heard.”

From the field to the boardroom, there’s a lot of work to be done.

According to AGC, people who identify as Black make up 12 percent of the total workforce, but only 6 percent of the construction labor pool. Women compose 47 percent of the overall workforce, but just 9 percent of construction workers, according to the AGC.

Asked how much progress he’s seeing in the building industry on the diversity front, Johnson said it depends on where you’re looking.

“If you walked in our lunch room, you would say, ‘You guys are making really good progress,’” he said. “If you walked into a senior leadership meeting, you’d say, ‘You guys really need to get going.’

“But our senior leadership looks like the people we hired 20 and 30 years ago. So I think the dilemma for Mortenson and a lot of firms is: ‘How do we diversify our leadership while still respecting the people that are growing up inside our industry and inside our company?’

“That’s a challenge we all face.”

Each day of Construction Inclusion Week offers a theme related to specific challenges and opportunities.

In Mortenson’s case, the main topic is supplier diversity. The firm has made a concerted effort to work with a diverse group of suppliers, including women- and minority-owned firms, Johnson said.

That applies to all of its projects, not just on public work, he said. Johnson added that it’s not enough to just have diversity outreach plans for big projects like U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, which come with equity goals.

“You can’t have that (one large project) and then not do it again until the next public project, because you won’t create the capacity in the industry,” Johnson added. “And it’s just the wrong thing to do.

“We need to have diversity on every project to build that capacity to allow those firms to be sustainable.”

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This free article brought to you by Perlo Construction

While questions saturate the construction market’s future, industry leaders still see strong resiliency.

Commercial builders typically have a three-to-five-year horizon for planning and implementation. Tim Johnson, general manager and executive vice president of Skanska USA Building, said time will tell whether there will be long-term economic ripples from the pandemic that affect contracting businesses in the Portland-metro area.

“We believe the market is strong, and if our pipeline and planned pursuits are an indicator, there will be few recession-type concerns,” he said about Skanska’s 2021 projections.

Skanska is looking to rededicate itself to carbon reduction through use of mass timber, Johnson said. The company is focusing on wood because it requires less preparation, less handling, less packaging and less refinement, he said.

Skanska has set a goal to reduce its carbon emissions globally by 50 percent by 2030. The company is using technology to calculate emissions and refine its resource strategies.

“By being proactive in our planning and building choices today, we will help work towards achieving this lofty goal,” Johnson said.

Aside from managing projects and dealing with the pandemic, Skanska is striving to increase diversity in its workforce, and form relationships with diverse vendors and project partners, Johnson said.

Greg Holloran, operations manager for Turner Construction, said there’s still a lot of uncertainty, especially with the market. But he believes that could soon change.

The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines is the “first piece of certainty that we have seen that has the potential to change something in the next coming months dramatically,” he said.

The economy has been through a formidable storm, but Holloran said Turner still believes work will be available.

When the pandemic initially hit, Perlo Construction Vice President of Business Development Todd Duwe said the firm was trying to get its arms around business.

The company has since focused on its workers’ welfare to ensure there aren’t any outbreaks on job sites.

Contractors made sure they were following social distancing rules, Duwe said, because if one project team didn’t follow the rules, the whole industry could have been shut down.

“It was a kindred spirit – didn’t matter if we were competitors,” he said. “As an industry, we’re all in this together. As an industry, we were concerned about keeping our job sites safe.”

Perlo Construction volunteers made face masks for employees and handwashing stations for job sites.

“We got our team intact through (2020) and are marching forward full steam ahead while staying vigilant,” Duwe said. “We still see good potential for projects in front of us.”

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When Vy Duong, an assistant field engineer with Turner Construction, was asked whether she would like to spearhead a Women in Construction Week event, she eagerly accepted.

Duong received a degree in civil engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in 2018, and then joined Turner Construction’s Portland office a year ago as an assistant engineer. She learned about the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) and its annual weeklong celebration around the same time.

“I found out about NAWIC through some of my colleagues in the organization,” she said. “And after that they were like, ‘Hey, you’re on a cool project; do you want to lead this tour?’ So I said, ‘Yes, that sounds good.’”

The “cool project” is the expansion of Adidas‘ North American headquarters in Portland’s Overlook neighborhood. There, two mass-timber buildings are being constructed along North Greeley Avenue.

On Wednesday, a group of around 15 women working in construction in the Portland area, and a few men too, joined Duong and others with Turner Construction at the Adidas campus.

“People sometimes ask me why I decided to join Turner,” Duong said. “And I think what makes me the most excited about Turner is that they support things like this. It’s been nothing but support.”

The larger north building – with a hybrid structural system of precast concrete columns, heavy timber beams and cross-laminated timber panels – will be five stories and hold mostly office space, while the smaller south building – all heavy timber – will be three stories and provide amenities for Adidas employees.

“I think there’s a significant desire right now in the Pacific Northwest to utilize wood in structures,” said Colin Foster, a Turner Construction superintendent working on the south building. “I think it derived from the client, Adidas, saying we want to utilize resources from the Pacific Northwest in our new construction. So the design team’s challenge was: How do we do that? And we arrived at this.”

Crews led by general contractor Turner Construction installed the final glulam beams and cross-laminated timber panels a little over a month ago. LEVER Architecture designed the buildings, KPFF Consulting Engineers performed structural engineering, and Interface Engineering handled mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

Even some mass-plywood panels 12 feet wide by 48 feet long now cover an existing soccer field that is being used to host subcontractor job trailers, materials and deliveries. Sheets of plywood were laminated together to form a much larger piece of lumber.

“We laid this down to protect the existing waterproofing,” said Andy Kavanaugh, a senior superintendent with Turner Construction. “There are two inches of Styrofoam and these are two inches thick. We put this in last April and it’s almost been a year and it’s held up pretty well out in the weather with no protection.”

The south building is being constructed an existing three-level parking garage below grade. Over three months of work was required to prepare the integration of the garage with the new building. This included reinforcement and thickening of existing columns, as well as driving 28 micropiles and pouring new footings for each of them.

“We poured new, huge footings on these piles and we took two-foot-diameter concrete columns that were there and we made them basically four feet with shotcrete and rebar cages all the way up,” Foster said. “So these columns (in each new building) land directly on the columns down in the garage.”

A grand staircase dominates the entrance and lobby for the north building. It has three-ply CLT panels, unlike the five-ply panels in the south building. Also, the south building uses a structural steel building core with buckling restraint bracing for seismic resilience. The north building, meanwhile, uses precast concrete girders and beams for structural support, along with glulam beams and cross-laminated timber panels.

Over 700 CLT panels were used on the north building, Kavanaugh said.

“Typically we’d take four loads a day,” he said. “They were stacked four to a truck. We had the glulams attached at the factory, so they all came out like a stack of Legos.”

A Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating is being sought for the project. The team is looking to deliver the south building in May and the north building in October.

“That’s definitely one of the highest priorities of Adidas,” Duong said. “They told us that on time and on schedule and under budget is good, but if you don’t get LEED, then this project is a failure.”

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CINCINNATI (AP) — One person remains missing and four were injured in Cincinnati after part of a building under construction collapsed Monday.

Turner Construction Company says in a statement that four workers were treated Monday and released from hospitals, while rescue efforts remained under way early Tuesday morning for a fifth worker.

Cincinnati Fire Chief Roy Winston said workers on the structure’s fifth floor were injured when part of the building collapsed after concrete was poured on the sixth floor.

The downtown Cincinnati building is unfinished and resides on a construction site that isn’t accessible to the public.

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said he’s praying for the man still lost as search teams continue working into the night.

Ron Howard, property manager of a building across the street, described the collapse as sounding like a “bunch of mud, metal crashing, timber falling.”

Turner Construction said it will release more information when it becomes available.

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Construction of a 25-story tower in Portland’s West End is due to begin in early 2020 after the development team received a substantial investment from a Chicago-based group.

Cresset Partners and the Goodman family will be equal partners in a large-scale opportunity zone fund to kick off Eleven West. The mixed-use building planned at Southwest 11th Avenue and Washington Street will hold 222 multifamily units, 116,000 square feet of office space and 7,900 square feet of retail space.

The building will be a sister structure to Twelve | West, which was completed in 2009 and fetched $206 million when it was sold to Greystar Real Estate Partners in July 2018. Both projects were designed by ZGF Architects, with Gerding Edlen serving as developer.

Eleven West was approved by the Portland Design Commission in October 2017, but construction was delayed while the Goodmans sought financing.

The Goodmans hired Newmark Knight Frank in San Francisco to attract an opportunity zone partner. The firm found Cresset.

Critics say opportunity zones haven’t met their intended purpose of sparking investment in impoverished areas. Instead, across the nation, opportunity zone funds have presented investment opportunities in areas much like Portland’s West End – one of the hottest and most expensive real estate submarkets in Oregon.

Greg Goodman, president of Downtown Development Group, said if not for opportunity zones, Eleven West would have been the receiving end of a 1031 exchange – a tax treatment that allows investors to defer paying capital gains on real estate sales. Instead, state, county and city governments will receive taxes from the Eleven West project, he said.

“The state will get a big tax check they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten,” Goodman said.

Opportunity zone rules also encourage investors to hold onto properties for longer terms to fully realize tax advantages.

“It allows investors to take a longer-term approach and not be worried about building into an overbuilt market,” Goodman said.

Another opportunity zone fund is being used to attract investors to the 35-story Block 216 project in downtown Portland. That fund is managed by Baker Tilly Capital of Philadelphia.

Also, Sturgeon Development Partners is using an opportunity zone fund for a hotel project in Salem and possible future development projects.

Construction of Eleven West is slated to begin in late January, with Turner Construction serving as general contractor, Goodman said.

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Portland’s tallest tower, the Wells Fargo Center, and an adjoining building are undergoing an extensive renovation.

General contractor Turner Construction is engaged in a complex series of abatement, demolition and renovation work to modernize the lower floors of the tower occupied by Wells Fargo as well as the entire Exchange Building (formerly the Data Processing Building) on the eastern portion of the two-block site. The two buildings are linked by a fourth story sky-bridge (over Southwest Fourth Avenue) that also is undergoing renovation – including the addition of a large mid-span skylight.

In addition to removing tons of hazardous materials used in construction of the two buildings, which opened in 1972, crews are performing both structural and aesthetic upgrades.

Ground was broken in January, and completion is expected in January 2020.

“Asbestos is in the building, so a lot of work is going on around that,” said Jessica Hartwell, a Turner Construction project engineer assigned to the tower portion of work. “A lot of our scope is getting rid of that, so we’re stripping everything back to structure and then moving all the way forward. It’s in the elevator shafts – every piece of steel in the building.”

The tower’s main entrance also is being overhauled; a new glass and steel canopy bearing the Wells Fargo name is being installed. New glazing is being installed up to the third story.

Outdoors, new precast concrete seating and landscaping will be added to an existing sunken plaza.

“We’re going through the (tower) basement, which used to be safety deposit level, called SD, through level four, which used to be a complete mechanical core,” Hartwell said. “Basically the entire purpose of the renovation is to provide more amenities for tenants.”

The Exchange Building is receiving more extensive work, including the removal of a drive-thru and much of an existing terrace that wraps around the ground floor. Meanwhile, new interior space is being created with construction of a new third floor above the second level. Walls there are being pushed outward to match the rest of the building and eliminate former outdoor amenity space.

“Basically, this used to be a building full of offices for Wells Fargo, and we’re just basically wiping it clean – just shelling it out,” said Brodie Bricker, Turner Construction superintendent for the Exchange Building work. “We’ve built out the second floor. It used to be a mushroom shape, and we’ve added a perimeter and a second-floor deck, which is a concrete-on-metal deck tied into the existing perimeter columns.”

Doing so, he added, is moving the walls out 32 feet to the perimeter of the building and adding thousands of square feet of usable space on levels one and two.

“It used to be an exterior, paved hangout area – a usable amenity space – but nobody really used it,” Bricker said. “It was a double height outdoor space, so this job has kind of taken that space back.”

Atop the Exchange Building, a new landscaped deck and amenity space is being constructed out of a former rooftop mechanical room.

West of West and SERA Architects designed the project. Lincoln Property Co. is the building manager.

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Hassalo on Eighth, a superblock development in Lloyd designed by GBD Architects and completed by general contractor Turner Construction in 2015, has received a . The project is the first multi-block development to receive such a rating via U.S. Green Building Council standards that were updated in 2018 as part of LEED version 4.

For Hassalo on Eighth, an asphalt parking lot was transformed into a new community of three mixed-use buildings. These include Velomor, Aster Tower and The Elwood Building, which have a combined total of 657 housing units and approximately 50,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.

The project, for San Diego-based American Assets Trust, was recognized for its community connectivity, resource efficiency, green infrastructure and three buildings that each earned separate LEED platinum ratings.

Some of the updates to the LEED Neighborhood Development category in 2018 include a change to require bicycle facilities (such as parking and showers) to provide connectivity to a bicycle network, as well as higher thresholds for rainwater management on-site.

Green elements of Hassalo on Eighth include a pedestrian path lined with vegetation and water features, vegetated roofs, and rooftop gardens and terraces. Together, they improve air quality and reduce cooling loads.

Also, Hassalo on Eighth is one of the first urban neighborhoods in the U.S. to treat and recycle 100 percent of wastewater generated on-site using a Natural Organic Recycling Machine.

“The architecture and landscape design are intended to create a sense of community that is focused on eco-district strategies,” GBD Architects design principal Kyle Andersen stated in a press release. “The project serves to help diversify the existing commercial real estate, and be a catalyst to other development to help stitch the Lloyd neighborhood into the urban fabric.”

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Time is ticking as the Portland Timbers prepare to play their 2019 home opener on June 1. Then the Portland Thorns play theirs the next day. Meanwhile, a team led by Turner Construction is working to finish an $85 million expansion project at Providence Park – the soccer teams’ home field. Crews started work in October 2017.

“I think we’re all ready to be done for sure,” Turner Construction project manager Brian Sabom said Tuesday at the stadium. “We’ve been doing this for 20 months now, and there’s a lot of hard effort that was put into it. We’ve had over 1,000 workers come through our safety orientation, so a lot of people in Portland have touched this project. We’re excited to turn it over.”

The highlight of the project, designed by Allied Works Architecture, is an addition to the stadium’s east side that holds more than 4,000 new seats. The grandstand towers over the field-level seating built in 2011 and features three tiers.

Other improvements include: a large LED scoreboard mounted on the stadium’s west side, new locker rooms for both home and away teams, and a number of other features to improve the fan experience.

“We’re ready; we’re in good shape,” said Mike Golub, the Timbers’ president of business. “As you walk around you’ll see things that still need to get done and that’s not uncommon for where we are, 25, 26 days out. But the really key, critical milestones we’ve been hitting all the way, so we’ll be ready to go June 1 for Timbers and June 2 for the Thorns.”

In terms of an improved spectator experience, the new scoreboard is just the start, Golub said. There will be an accompanying sound system installed, along with renovated concession stands, signage and lighting throughout the existing stadium concourse. Also, a new team store is being built on the stadium’s west side.

“The idea was for every fan, whether you’re sitting in these new stands here or in the old areas, when they come to the stadium on June 1, they’re going to hear, see and feel a lot of new things,” Golub said.

Chelsea Grassinger, an Allied Works Architecture principal, said the overarching intent of the grandstand design was to fulfill original plans that called for a U-shaped venue. It wasn’t a complete horseshoe when it opened in 1926 as Multnomah Stadium because of a shortage of funding.

“Ultimately what was built was the north side and the west side,” Grassinger said. “So what we’ve done here is to realize the original design vision for Providence Park.”

On the outside, a glass façade now reveals the structure to passersby.

“Part of our mission was to complete that original vision, but sort of enforce the visibility and lightness and connectivity to the city,” Grassinger said. “Pedestrians can also feel connected to the action and the activity in the stadium. And then creating that light, veil-like transparency of the façade and the whole height glass and visibility gives back to the city.”

Construction crews have completed most of the big tasks. These days, tradespeople are scrambling around the stadium to take care of the smaller stuff.

“We have a lot of work to do – a lot of finish work that we’re still working on,” Sabom said. “We’re trying to complete the roof membrane on the new roof we’ve built and there are just a lot of finishing touches to put on the project from a finishing perspective.”

Despite challenges, including a highly constrained job site, the project has remained on schedule throughout construction, Sabom said.

“Yeah, there have been challenges throughout,” he said. “But as of right now, everything that we expected of the project to be complete is going to be complete, and I think it’ll be a seamless (opening) for the fans and for the city of Portland.”

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