In the News

DPR Construction will build just south of the existing 130,000-square-foot building. The new space will house three linear accelerators for radiation treatments; 30 clinic exam rooms, 13 infusion bays and an expansion of a laboratory intake center and welcome center. Space also will be dedicated for the Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy program. The new space will be open by spring 2014.

“One of our core values,” said Dave Seastrom, regional manager for technical builder DPR Construction in Newport Beach, “is enjoyment.”

Pages 18 and 28.

Page 18, "Tapping Into State's Potential"

With no application process, the award came as a complete surprise; DPR was selected from the entire metropolitan Phoenix area based on word of mouth.

Lots of firms bandy the word "innovation" about but never actually introduce something new. One California-based general contractor, however, has hit the mark...

National DPR Mission Critical Group Leaders Mark Thompson and David Ibarra discuss data center trends with Mary Ann Azevedo of the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal.

Monica Rodriguez, Staff Writer
Created: 04/25/2010 02:59:05 PM PDT

POMONA - Weeks of designing, planning and building came together Saturday when dozens of construction workers converged on the Boys and Girls Club of Pomona Valley.

While some people planted a flower and vegetable garden behind the club, others were painting the inside of the club with vibrant colors.

Carpenters built a sturdy wooden structure that will allow club members to take refuge from the summer sun while they wait to take a dip in the nearby pool.

The renovation project was carried out by DPR Construction as a gift to the club.

The club's executive director, Victor Caceres, said what DPR has done is huge.

"We never expected it to be so awesome," Caceres said.

While working on the construction of two new buildings and a parking structure at Western University of Health Science, company representatives and club officials began talking.

"We saw a lot of potential with this site," said Jason King, an engineer with the firm.

The company invited subcontractors it works with to participate, King said.

More than 30 companies agreed to help out with labor or materials, and some provided monetary donations.

As of this weekend, the volunteer labor and materials added up to about $115,000, King said.

Part of the construction work began April 16, but the big push was left for Saturday, which is National Rebuilding Day, he said.

National Rebuilding Day is an annual project of Rebuilding Together, a national nonprofit with chapters around the country.

On the last Saturday of April, chapters carry out projects to improve the homes of low-income people, according to the organization's website.

DPR Construction has a history of participating in such efforts, but in recent years the company began looking for bigger projects that would benefit more people, said regional manager Jim Washburn.

In 2006 the company carried out its first Boys and Girls Club renovation project and has continued to work with clubs every year, he said.

Taking on such projects is about giving back to the community, Washburn said.

The Pomona club renovation includes refurbishing restrooms, building a small office for the club's athletic director, adding storage rooms and installing tracks for radio-controlled cars.

The club's game room now has series of smaller rooms, each designated for a specific uses such as music programs and arts and crafts. Another room will become an education center with computers, a library and other educational resources.

The club's former education center has been turned into a teen center, something the older members of the club requested.

Getting to Saturday's massive effort involved considerable planning that included brainstorming sessions with children and teens.

"The kids helped design everything. It was pretty fun," King said.

Teens at the club said Saturday that they welcome all the improvements being made and see the changes as giving the facility a new feel.

"It's more organized. You feel happy that you're here," said club member Asusena Valdez, 16.

"You want to show it off ... It's a clean place and it's new," added club member Marcella Torres, 15.

The work DPR has done is important on many levels, Caceres said.

The company's work might be just a construction project, but "for us it's really building lives," he said.

Such a project lets young people know that adults care about them, Caceres said.

"The project DPR has taken on will make a difference at the club, but there are other needs that still need attention," Caceres said.

The list of projects includes updating the club's facades, repaving the parking lots and upgrading the pool.

The club also needs a new monument sign, and the gym needs acoustic tiles replaced with a more modern noise- reducing material, he said. Having a new music room requires such equipment as musical instruments, Caceres said.

Those interested in taking on a project can contact the club by going to www.begreatpomona.org or by calling 909-623-8538.

Project Engineer Becky Stone shows up at 7 a.m., an hour before the weekly owner-architect-contractor meeting at DPR Construction's South San Francisco project office. Her first focus is on last week's meeting minutes. Then she prepares the agenda.

On a rotating basis, all of DPR's project managers and engineers run an owner's meeting. Now, it is Stone's turn, after just six months on the job.

DPR hired Stone, 23, last December after she graduated with a construction engineering management degree from Purdue University. She was a paid summer intern for DPR for the past four summers. She summered last year on this project, which consists of the fourth of a four-building campus for a confidential biotechnology client.

"A great thing about DPR is they give their project engineers a lot of responsibility," she says. "Not too many engineers that I know of would be running owner meetings."

With agenda and minutes delivered to the conference room, Stone greets the 30 or so attendees. Stone follows the agenda: safety incidents (none), schedule (on time), third-party commissioning, submittals, RFIs and punchlist work (completed/pending).

After the hour-long meeting, Stone handles some paperwork, then dons a hardhat, glasses and safety vest. Together with intern Jennifer Chang from the University of California, Berkeley, she heads out to the project site. Fellow DPR engineer Charlie Allnutt joins them. Each project engineer oversees eight to 10 subs, so during this walkthrough Stone keeps in touch with them via walkie talkie.

On the first floor, Stone and crew check the finish on doors and corners in the lobby, cube areas and offices. A scratch on a glass door cannot be rubbed out. "Replace the scratched door? That's the $5,000 question," Stone mutters, making notes.

Allnutt pauses as Stone walks away and says, "You know, it's really amazing how Becky just steps right in and manages this project. Really, from day one."

After a quick lunch, Stone and Chang go over more paperwork in preparation for the turnover package. In mid-afternoon, Stone takes the daily safety walk. This duty also is rotated among the engineers, and it's her turn. Chang joins her. "We have to make sure they're wearing hardhats, there are no tripping hazards and no open outlets," she says.

At the building's entrance, Stone meets up with Assistant Superintendent Art Saldana and goes over punchlist items that he and DPR carpenter Jeremy Reiss are working on. They joke around a bit.

"The most important part of this job is establishing relationships with your co-workers," she says. "You never know. During crunch time they can really help you out."

Back at the office, Stone says the project will wrap up mid-July. "After that, I don't know where I'm going next," she says. Dave Bogan, DPR's project superintendent, says Stone can pretty much go anywhere and do anything. "I am a huge Becky Stone fan and expect nothing but great things for her future," he says.

Sometimes the best technology is the one that provides a bridge between the old and new.

E-mail faxing, or e-faxing, is one of those technologies. And services are springing up to supply it to a variety of businesses.

E-Fax, MyFax, MongoFax and RapidFax, to name a few, all provide similar services. Material sent to a fax number is converted into a PDF and sent to an e-mail box rather than a fax machine.

"The service is especially suited to document-heavy sectors: health care, real estate, design firms," said Sue Rutherford, director of marketing communications for Ottawa-based Protus, which provides the MyFax service in North America and the U.K.

MyFax is gaining about 10,000 subscribers a month, she said.

Although the services employ different pricing models, most run about $10 a month per fax number, with additional charges for very high-volume use. Subscribers choose their own numbers.

Savvy information technology professionals have known about e-faxing since the mid-1990s, when it was essentially free.

"I've been using E-Fax since 1998," said Anet Dunne, owner of A Net Gain for Revenue, a Web development and marketing firm in Santa Rosa.

"An IT person suggested it to me when I wanted to receive mortgage documents at the office, but didn't want other people looking at them," she said.

She grew to appreciate receiving files in digital form without the copying, scanning and printing processes that can produce errors.

"There are still people who want to send faxes, but my way of receiving them increases speed, reduces error and saves paper," said Ms. Dunn, who doesn’t pay for the service. Her senders, she said, are billed for the call.

Ellen Turner, IT director of the CPS Avalar residential real estate brokerage in Santa Rosa, said all the offices have a MongoFax number.

"It's secure, and it allows brokers to work from home, so we like the flexibility aspect. But the material still has to be scanned in at one end and contracts can run to huge stacks of paper, so there's a downside. Recently I found a solution called ScanSmith that addresses that problem, but it has to be used at the office, so mobility is lost. It's a trade-off," she said.

Security, flexibility and mobility are important to DPR Construction, which has an office in Petaluma, but paper and energy conservation appeal to Ted van der Linden, director of sustainable construction.

"All of our teams and management like the mobility. It's a huge plus. But I'm always trying to think of ways to conserve in areas that we don't control, like faxes."

E-Fax, he said, directs all incoming material to a central inbox, where the junk can be deleted immediately; files that require electronic storage are transmitted electronically; and those that need to be printed can be outputted in a compressed PDF format using both sides of the page.

"That's three ways we save energy right there. Soon we'll have no incoming faxes at all, for a 20 percent reduction in paper," said Mr. van der Linden.

Bob Alvord and his father are both semi-retired, but they operate a real estate appraisal service covering Napa and counties to the east from their separate homes using E-Fax.

"We've been using it for about two years, and it's a great time and cost saver. All incoming business mail, Internet orders and other material comes in to a central entry point. When you run a business as small as ours, it really simplifies communications.

"For us, it represents cost savings, convenience and efficiency," he said.

Another small business, Carol Shelton Wines in Windsor, has found MyFax invaluable, according to general manager and owner Mitch McKenzie.

"When my wife Carol Shelton and I are on the road, there's nobody left in the office to pick up faxes, and we run the risk of losing an order," he said.

The former software engineer for Hewlett Packard has devised a perfect solution. He subscribes to a call forwarding service which he activates whenever he and his wife hit the road. Call forwarding connects fax calls to his MyFax number, which sends them on the couple's laptops. In their hotel each evening they accept orders, fill out the necessary paperwork at the Web site of the Sonoma co-op where their wine is stored, and arrange electronically for its release to distributors.

Once home, he redirects fax calls to the machine.

"Most wine orders come in by fax, so you can't ignore the technology. But e-faxing advances the technology," he said.

 SAN RAFAEL – Software giant Autodesk is among a growing number of companies in the North Bay and nationwide that are realizing that constructing commercial space "green" isn't only for real estate developers or owners anymore.

San Rafael-based Autodesk is leasing 20,000 more square feet at 1 McInnis Parkway. It's a small move for a company with 1.3 million square feet at about 120 locations worldwide, but it represents a global shift in corporate real estate philosophy, according to Stephen Fukuhara, director of facilities operations and projects.

Earlier this year Autodesk applied for a "gold" level of certification under the relatively new commercial interiors standards of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy-Efficient Design (LEED) program and is exploring existing building certification for offices at 111 McInnis. Also in progress is LEED-CI Gold certification for 40,000 square feet in Oregon.

"As we move forward, we're trying to move to LEED certification for our space," Mr. Fukuhara said. Offices in Europe and Asia already use low-odor paint and furniture and carpet made from recycled materials.

Autodesk is the first North Bay corporate tenant to pursue the LEED-CI certification. Redwood Credit Union is seeking LEED-CI Silver for the headquarters offices it owns at 3033 Cleveland Ave. in Santa Rosa.

A challenge facing Autodesk in seeking LEED certification is the company's customary five-year lease terms, according to Mr. Fukuhara. However, some of the more costly LEED point-winners – high-efficiency windows and climate-control systems, recycled or low-flow water systems, and solar panels – have longer payback periods than that, forcing Autodesk and its landlords to make tough choices.

So Autodesk started with a newer, more energy- and water-efficient building and pursued LEED-CI at a cost of only 3 percent to 4 percent more than standard office improvements, according to Erik Selvig, geo facilities manager for the Americas West division.

To help with the transition to green-tenanting, Autodesk hired Mr. Selvig from Hines in July and brought in DPR Construction and interiors specialist Pollack Architecture early on.

Green interiors are catching on nationwide, according to Ted van der Linden, DPR's director of sustainable construction. Forty-six percent of the company's $1.6 billion in job contracts last year involve green construction, and many of those 40 green projects are pursuing LEED certification.

Profitability considerations of LEED certification can be considerable for a commercial property owner, according to Jim Albrecht, senior project manager for Los Angeles-based Barker Pacific Group, which is renovating former aircraft hangars at a Novato project called Hamilton Landing.

In 2004 the company analyzed how many LEED points it could get for its award-winning under-floor heating and cooling system and renovating existing buildings as class A office space. The project needed only five more points to qualify for certification.

However, replacing dozens of windows in each hangar, increasing roof insulation, besting California's already stringent Title 24 energy-efficiency standards by 20 percent and employing the design team longer to plan and document the project would have added $750,000 to $1.25 million to each renovation, Mr. Albrecht estimated.

"It's not yet come into the market for underwriting and lending purposes that a LEED-certified building sells for more per square foot than a traditional building and tenants will pay a higher rental rate for certified space versus space with 'green' features," Mr. Albrecht said.

He made such a case to Novato when the city was considering LEED certification on commercial buildings in its recently adopted green-building ordinance. Silver-level LEED certification on larger commercial spaces is part of San Rafael's recently proposed version of such an ordinance.

For details, call the U.S. Green Building Council at 202-828-7422 or visit www.usgbc.org.

DOUGLASVILLE - In a move designed to position it to meet the growing blood needs of metro Atlanta and the more than 130 hospitals it serves statewide, the American Red Cross Blood Services Southern Region recently moved into a 185,000 square feet, state-of-the-art blood processing center in the New Manchester community of Douglasville.

On Friday, June 1, DPR Construction Inc., the general contracting firm which built the facility, presented regional representatives with a $20,000 check to help with the cost of decorating the new building. The money was raised during DPR’s 1st Annual Building Great Things Golf Tournament held last October at the Currahee Golf Club, Toccoa, GA.

Randy Edwards, CEO, Southern Region, and Wayne Brown, Strategic Capital Improvement Project coordinator, accepted the check on behalf of the American Red Cross. Also present were DPR representatives Darryl Strunk, Regional Operations Manager, Andy Andres, Regional Manager, Patrick Houck, Project Manager, and Steve Bartkowski, Corporate Customers and Relationships Manager.

"We greatly appreciate DPR’s contribution to this very important Red Cross project," said Edwards. "This gift is tangible evidence of their commitment to, and interest in, what goes on in the community around them."

"We live and do business in this community and it’s to the benefit of all of us to give back," said Bartkowski.

The Red Cross began transitioning its staff and operations to its new headquarters at the start of April and is now fully operational from the center located at 9851 Commerce Way, Douglasville. The need for more blood and the ability to process and distribute a greater volume of blood prompted the Red Cross to move to a facility capable of meeting the present and future requirements of regional hospitals.

Most healthy people age 17 or older, who weigh at least 110 pounds, can donate blood every 56 days. The American Red Cross Blood Services, Southern Region needs approximately 1,200 people to donate blood each weekday to meet the needs of hospital patients. To make an appointment or to find the donor center or blood drive nearest you, please call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE (448-3543) or log on to http://www.givebloodredcross.org

AMERICAN RED CROSS RECEIVES CHECK FROM DPR CONSTRUCTION INC.: Randy Edwards, CEO, American Red Cross, Southern Region (third left), and Wayne Brown, Strategic Capital Improvement Project coordinator, American Red Cross (fourth left), accept a check for $20,000 from DPR Construction, Inc. representatives (l-r) Darryl Strunk, Regional Operations Manager, Andy Andres, Regional Manager, Patrick Houck, Project Manager, and Steve Bartkowski, Corporate Customers and Relationships Manager, on June 1, 2007. The money was raised during the 1st Annual Building Great Things Golf Tournament sponsored by DPR and will go towards decorating the recently completed blood processing facility in New Manchester, Douglasville. The 185,000 square feet facility, the third of its kind nationally, was built by DPR and houses a state-of-the-art blood processing center as well as the headquarters for the American Red Cross Southern Region and Southeast Division.

Think big.

That's what California's general contractors say they need to do when building projects valued at $50 million or more.

In our annual ranking of the state's largest projects, we asked general contractors to submit projects valued at $50 million or more that broke ground in 2006. Contractors responded by sending us their parking garages, hospitals and transportation projects; we then ranked them by dollar amount and then broke down top projects by category, such as education and healthcare.

And while these projects may seem big, they are often not complex. Instead, working on $50 million-plus projects simply means thinking larger: More material, longer construction schedule, more risk.

Otherwise, large projects face some of the same obstacles that contractors face when working on smaller projects.

It can be difficult to find subcontractors to work on both small and large projects, says Bob Martz, regional vice president in the Southwest division of PCL Construction Services Inc. in Glendale.

"The subcontractor market is so busy," Martz adds. "It's tough to get subcontractors."

PCL often finds it will use the same subcontractors over and over for large projects, in part because those subcontractors have the financial wherewithal to handle such construction, says Martz.

Other smaller subcontractors may not simply have the financial ability, he adds.

Eric Lamb, executive vice president with Redwood City-based DPR Construction Inc., agrees that it is more difficult to find subcontractors to work on larger projects.

Another problem is material availability, Lamb adds.

"Materials, such as steel have longer lead times that can stretch out schedules beyond previous durations," says Lamb. "Fabricated steel lead times are as much as 35 weeks right now on larger projects."

When building large projects in California, general contractors agree that building hospitals and healthcare facilities is one of the most difficult challenges.

DPR Construction has two healthcare projects on California Construction's list. Building healthcare takes time and care to do right, says Lamb.

"Large scale healthcare projects are very complex and take a long time to get designed and permitted in California," Lamb adds. "They tend to be the most difficult of the projects we undertake and require a very specialized team with experience in acute care work."

PCL Construction Services will work on virtually any type of project except healthcare, says Martz.

"The rules and regulations that have been put into place make it difficult to build [hospitals] on time," Martz adds. "We believe such projects should be built on time."

Because healthcare construction can lead to major claims and/or lawsuits, PCL will probably not enter that field anytime soon in California, he says.

"Until the rules change and it's more of a collaborative approach, we will probably stay away," Martz adds.

There are a number of risks involved with building larger projects. One of the main risks is that if a contractor does not deliver a project on time, a number of people are affected, says Mario Wijtman, vice president with XL Construction of Milpitas.

"There is a lot riding on the timely completion of manufacturing facilities," says Wijtman. "The client has created its business plan based on being able to have a validated facility by a set date. They begin hiring campaigns and marketing campaigns accordingly."

Both Lamb and Martz say taking on larger projects means investing more money and time.

"We need to be very disciplined in our processes and meeting commitments to do well on larger projects," says Lamb.

Building larger projects can also result in both negatives and positives for a contractor, says Martz.

"When we built Staples Center, that definitely opened up the eyes of a lot of owners in California," says Martz. "On the negative side, a lot of owners said PCL only does big, big projects. You don't want to be known as a contractor who only does big jobs."

When predicting future trends for larger projects, the contractors say they see the field diverging into different paths.

Lamb with DPR says the way buildings get built will change.

"One trend is to have more technology utilized on larger projects, such as 3D modeling and web-based project management tools," he says.

XL construction believes there will be more work available for biotech projects, says Wijtman.

"As the biotech industry continues to mature there will be higher demand for pilot and manufacturing facilities," he says.

Future trends may not necessarily be predicated on advanced technology, but instead on meeting simple demand, says Martz. And as California continues to grow, the state will need to build large projects simply to produce basic infrastructure, he adds.

Road projects, education and water and wastewater facilities will be needed, he says, and adds that the passage of a series of bonds in November means that money will be available for these things.

"You need more and more transportation projects. You need more freeways," says Martz. "You have a lot more kids. You need schools."