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01 Jun

Posted at 09:26h in News, Project Milestone, United Team

As the 2020-2021 school year at Swope Middle School approaches its end, exterior work on the roofing and interior work on school facilities continues full steam ahead.

“This summer will be a busy time for construction at the school,” said Casey Gunther, Operations Manager at United Construction. “With finishes to the new gymnasium and roofs starting to take shape, we are poised to move forward with Phase 3 of the project: demolition, new classroom construction and existing facility remodel. I am honored to work alongside my United colleagues and our Washoe County School District, architectural, safety and engineering partners as we hit major milestones on the schoolgrounds.”

Interior framing in the new gymnasium has begun, and drywall will be installed in the coming weeks along with finishes to the basketball hoops, bleachers, wood flooring, paint and lockers. Consequently, demolition of the existing gym will take place in mid-to-late June. Site workers are also preparing to demolish the library to make room for the new kitchen as well as demolish and remodel the band/choir rooms. Outside, neighborhood residents can enjoy the metal canopy close to completion.

Completion of the PVC Membrane Roofing system over the gym marks a significant project landmark. The roof supports four HVAC units (two in the locker rooms and two in the fitness room) that will heat and cool the building. Skylights will also be installed that will amplify natural light into the entire area, which is “a welcomed addition to the typical industrious gym environment,” said Gunther.

In the meantime, residents can expect an increase in traffic through both the west side of the property (Sherwood Drive and Balsam Street) and the east side (Keele Drive).

Photo Credits: Ryland Sweigard

16 May

Posted at 15:02h in Community, News, United Team

The week of May 16th officially marks National Public Works Week in the United States. During this week, we celebrate public works employees and construction partners – like the superintendents and engineers on our UCC team and our subcontractors who physically build our state-of-the-art public projects in the field. In terms of public works, these incredibly hard workers serve our community by building and renovating our schools, health centers, roads, airports and aircraft facilities, public spaces and more.

The American Public Works Association (APWA) announced the theme for this year’s National Public Works Week: “Stronger Together.” According to APWA, the idea for this theme is to challenge their membership and the larger public works and associated communities “to think about the role public works plays in creating a great place to live. By working together, the impact citizens and public works professionals can have on their communities is magnified and results in the ability to accomplish goals once thought unattainable.”

Give your fellow public works employees and construction partners some extra love this week!

Featured in the photo above are site workers doing great work on the job at Swope Middle School in August 2020.

14 May

Posted at 12:46h in News, Project Milestone, United Team

Community Health Alliance (CHA) is a network of high-quality community medical centers across Northern Nevada providing comprehensive health services to a wide variety of populations, especially those who are underserved. United Construction is honored to be the construction partner for CHA on the renovation of their Oddie Boulevard clinic in Sparks.

The clinic remodel includes expanding into the adjoining tenant space to build more exam rooms, a brand new nurses station, and an expanded waiting room. Nurses have officially moved into their newly constructed station, and patients are enjoying the improved, welcoming waiting areas. Assistant Superintendent Justin Brunner is overseeing the progress of the project on-site, and his team members are excited to be in the field constructing the new-and-improved facilities to help CHA serve even more Nevadans with affordable and quality healthcare.

Featured above you will see an example of part of a new exam room at the clinic. See below for a before-and-after photo array of one of the exam room hallways inside the clinic on Oddie Blvd. For more information on Community Health Alliance, visit their website at www.chanevada.org.

     

06 May

Posted at 09:38h in News, Project Milestone, United Team

Swift progress is afoot at the Dassault Falcon jobsite on the Reno Tahoe International Airport grounds. The 10,978 sf, two-story addition – designed by Dave Eckes and overseen on-site by Pete Brunner – will feature parts storage, locker rooms, records storage and a second-floor training/event room, avionics work room, engineering, conference room and quality assurance department.

Site workers have poured the concrete for the stairs, installed girders, closed all big footings and are getting closer to finishing the siding of the expansion. Elite Safety is doing regular safety inspections, and the site continually gets a clean bill of health.

Dassault Falcon employees expressed much excitement to the United Construction team over the progress of the addition. Dassault looks forward to having extra space for comfortable storage, changing areas and meeting rooms.

Project completion is currently scheduled for the end of June.

About Dassault and UCC’s Relationship
Dassault is a French based aircraft manufacturer of business and corporate jets. The United Construction design-build team also delivered the existing building used by Dassault. United delivered it in 1996 as an aircraft maintenance hangar for Reno Air.

03 May

Posted at 10:31h in Community, News, United Team

The first full week in May of each year marks North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Week, which launched in 1997 from an agreement between the USA, Canada and Mexico. According to naosh.org, the goal of this commemorative event “is to focus employers, employees, partners and the public on the importance of preventing injury and illness in the workplace, at home, and in the community.”

United Construction has a safety-focused culture and sets a precedence for safety in the workplace, with a commitment to zero accidents and zero injuries. From on-site logistics and training to expert advisement from our partner Elite Safety, we take this seriously, and that includes protecting the health of our team. We are especially proud – not just this special week but every week – to have the support of our safety partner to help us excel in our high safety standards for our projects.

If we could pin one incident as a major test of our immense dedication to preventing injury and illness at work, it would be the COVID-19 pandemic. With strict precautions to keep everyone healthy – including mask mandates, social distancing, high cleanliness standards and fostering a culture of care where our staff members are encouraged to take sick time to care for ourselves – we will always keep the health and safety of our United team and partners at the forefront of what we do day in and day out.

How do you commit to occupational safety and health in your work?

30 Apr

Posted at 11:15h in News, Project Milestone, United Team

Tenancy has begun at 4141 Distribution Circle in North Las Vegas, one of our projects we’ve turned over with Dermody Properties after an aggressive 7-month schedule.

Justin Williams, who was project manager until handing off the project to Dane Horton in March, said it’s been a great project. “Thanks to the father-son team of Kerry and Colton Brock, the job went smoothly. We transformed a 20-year-old portion of the building with new finishes and systems, and we roughly doubled the warehouse space to a total of about 226,000 square feet.”

“Our expansion and renovation greatly increased the function and value of 4141 Distribution Circle, and helped re-position the building to a more modern and desirable warehouse/distribution facility,” said CEO Michael Russell.

The new warehouse is keeping Dermody Property representatives busy talking to interested tenants. In the photo above, you’ll see a shot highlighting the transition from the existing building to the expansion.

21 Apr

Posted at 11:03h in News, United Team

The Northern Nevada Business Weekly spoke with representatives from four contractors in Northern Nevada, including our very own Michael Russell. Michael spoke about the construction industry as it stands today, especially as the pandemic lingers on, and the opportunities that are imminent. Read his Q&A below, pulled directly from the NNBW article:

Question: What is the biggest difference in how your company assesses a job now versus before the pandemic?
Answer: The biggest difference for us is to focus on communicating our policies and procedures for the COVID response with our customers and incorporating language into our contracts, which allows us to react in unnecessary manner. There have been a few COVID delays in some of our projects, nothing major. But we have had a few impacts on a few projects where people showed up to the job site, and maybe had exposures or came up with COVID. So, we’ve had to do all the things that you’d have to do when you get exposed — sometimes stop the work for a few days till we can contract trace and figure out who’s exposed, who’s been exposed, etc. Really, it’s just communicating with all of our stakeholders and making sure our customers are aware of some of the impacts when they occur.

Q: What are the top challenges and opportunities facing your industry in 2021 and beyond?
A: For opportunities, this year — and probably for 2022 — there’s a very high demand for new industrial buildings, which is the bulk of our type of construction. That demand has been driven by the acceleration due to COVID of more goods being bought online and having to be delivered to people’s houses. That’s been driving our market sector property heavily. We’re as busy as we’ve ever been and we have more projects in the pipeline than we’ve ever had in terms of industrial. The main challenges we’re facing nowadays is steel and wood and plastic products have all become in high demand. Manufacturers right now have way more demand than they can actually manufacture and supply, so lead-time to getting materials to job sites is stretching out. In addition, there are cost escalations going on in the marketplace based on the inverted supply-demand ratio right now. And then thirdly, the top challenges and opportunities we have is finding and hiring quality people. Our business here locally is kind of limited because we have a small population. Companies like ours have to kind of sit back and balance our resources, because we can’t take on necessarily everything we get an opportunity to look at, so we have to look at our resources to make sure that we can perform the work without killing our people with overtime. So, that’s a kind of balancing act right now for a lot of companies here.

Q: With the need for masks, social distancing and other measures, how do you address safety in the workplace differently now?
A: We follow the Washoe County Health Department and CDC guidelines. And additional to the traditional safety items, we also ensure the proper use of personal protection equipment, and social distancing, health assessments, proper sanitation facilities, and cleaning protocols. We’re reducing meeting sizes or changing locations to safely support larger groups, as well as additional documentation to record those efforts and support possible contact tracing as necessary. And we’re communicating that with our field staffs on a regular basis. Our field supervision project control teams are well-versed in these requirements; they’re on top of this stuff every day at the job site.

15 Apr

Posted at 10:54h in News, United Team

As we all know, Casey Gunther, Operations Manager for United Construction, was announced as a winner of the 2020 Twenty Under 40 Awards, hosted by the Reno-Tahoe Young Professionals Network. When he was (very deservedly!) selected among the 20 leaders under 40 in the northern Nevada, the Northern Nevada Business Weekly (NNBW) asked him to share his thoughts on the economy and community leadership. Check out his responses below, copied from the NNBW article:

Q: What do you see as the top one or two economic development opportunities in Northern Nevada in 2021 and beyond?
Casey Gunther: We will continue to grow in our role as a major distribution hub for a wide range of goods, including products manufactured and assembled here. The opportunity for tourism is very bright given our vast public lands and the increased desire for outdoor recreation. It would be great to see entrepreneurs further facilitate the … responsible use of our public lands for the outdoor activities like horseback riding, hiking, camping, bird watching and more.

Q: Why is it important for young professionals to have a seat at the table when it comes to the business community in Northern Nevada?
Gunther: It would be great to have more young people at the table who are inclusive and open-minded. Because our political parties have become so polarized, we need new leadership that is respectful of differing points of view and willing to seek compromise.

Q: What under the radar businesses have the biggest opportunity for growth in Northern Nevada?
Gunther: The healthy food processing industry … I think we will continue to see quality food and nutraceutical manufacturers move to Northern Nevada or expand their operations here. We are also seeing recreational equipment startups, and I think that trend will continue in support of outdoor enthusiasts nationwide.

Q: Where do you see the greater Reno-Sparks region in 5 years?
Gunther: We will have greater economic diversity as businesses from California and other states continue to relocate here for our favorable business environment. I have faith our school districts, our regional transportation commission and governing agencies will continue to responsibly respond to this growth.

Q: If you could change one thing for the better about your community, what would it be?
Gunther: I wish we could build homes that are more affordable. Our employees want to live in a community where their children will be able to buy homes and live comfortably in the future. Residential prices are on a trajectory that makes home ownership less likely in the future for young professionals.

Q: Why do you feel this region is better positioned to bounce back from the COVID recession than other parts of the state and country?
Gunther: As a major distribution hub, Reno-Sparks is seeing substantial growth in industrial, e-commerce, food processing and last-mile demand, because people are staying home and ordering online the goods and foods they can have delivered. This online product demand is driving distribution construction and employment. I think the convenience of online shopping will be the norm long past COVID.

12 Apr

Posted at 10:19h in News, Project Milestone, United Team

“As Uline shipped its first package today from its new Reno Fulfillment Center, I want to salute the United Construction team that kept and met our promises. Uline, at nearly a million square feet, is one of the most complex and aggressive projects we’ve ever delivered. Uline required an intense amount of customer service, and our team did an amazing job of responding to Uline’s highly detailed needs and expectations.”

Strong words of positivity from United’s Operations Manager Casey Gunther, as we complete our work at Uline’s new facility in Northern Nevada and employees begin shipping out products.

Uline is the largest shipping supply company in the world. They have 12 buildings in three countries including Canada, Mexico and the USA. This facility is just over 900,000 sf that features three separate tenant improvements. The main office is nearly 16,000 sf while the separate Warehouse Managers Office is a two-story office structure.

Uline has extremely high standards when it comes to their building – those standards which are set by the owner Elizabeth Uihlein as they try to keep each of their facilities set up the same.

For instance, Nick Crawford, the Superintendent on the project, gave a few examples of Uline’s high standards of excellence:

  • “The entire ceiling structure was painted with three coats of paint! While we had originally allotted two coats of paint for each 100,000 sf, we ended up adding an additional coat of oil base paint to the scope. Uline accelerated the painting contractor by paying all the overtime it took. So this meant three coats of paint on the ceiling structure totaling over 3,150,000 sf of paint.”
  • “The facility has a lot of racking, as one would expect for a warehouse, with some of the racking requiring in-rack fire suppression. The facility has a large automated UPS conveyor system In the UPS area. It also has an automated shrink wrap machine for shrink wrapping full size pallets in their bulk shipping area. The facility is equipped with a unique Sackett Battery charging station. This Sackett system is a fully automated battery charging station with 120 battery capacity for warehouse equipment charging needs. Given the facility operates 20 hours a day, the demand for batteries is more then we have seen in the past.”
  • “This project also has a generator that supports full power back up. In case of a power outage the Uline facility can fully operate with no down time. These are the things that made this project unique and challenging for our project team.”

The new Uline center sits at 8800 Military Road in Reno.

03 Mar

Posted at 09:03h in News, United Team

United Construction is in design on a $25,000,000 clean room project, says Paul Laird, our VP of Preconstruction. Hamilton Company, a manufacturer of precision measurement devices, hired us to expand its campus to include a 68,000 sf multi-story, high tech facility. Hamilton is responding to a tremendous demand in their products, including syringes, needles and lab instruments.

While we’ve worked for Hamilton before, United won the project by providing a competitive budget estimate, beating out a national clean room specialty contractor, who has worked for Hamilton. “We are seeing more owners who want multiple contractors to provide competitive budgets. The new facility featured a competition, and we won the work because we had the best number.”

Paul is collaborating with local architects at FormGrey Studio to design the facility. Architect Kay Radzik, who formerly worked at United, is on the FormGrey team.

“It’s a tough, complicated project,” Paul explains. “We have a lot of challenges with the small site and the logistics of fitting in a tremendous amount of equipment in the given space. We will be working closely with the city to scope the project to meet their parking and landscaping expectations within the one-acre site. It will take some finesse to get this through permitting.”

In 2013 at Hamilton, United delivered a 13,200 sf clean room, which is shown in the image above, and a workshop in an existing warehouse. We have done other tenant improvements at the campus, including the total renovation of their parking lot in 2020. Currently, we have an important roadway project in permitting for Hamilton on Reactor Way.