Cheers to 25 years! We had a blast celebrating Catherine Bernauer’s 25 years of service with a surprise lunch party, enjoying her favorite Chinese food. Thank you Catherine for being an integral part of UCC and a great friend to every one of us. We truly appreciate your hard work, loyalty, and the efforts you put in each day. Congrats Catherine!
We loved seeing the kids smile and their eyes light up with excitement as they ran to play in their new English Cottage-style playhouse! Thank you to our UCC team for their hard work designing, building and delivering the playhouse yesterday to its new home, and a huge thank you to Shannon Keel from Grand Sierra Resort for winning the playhouse at the auction at the Children’s Cabinet Art of Childhood Gala and generously donating it to the Summit Church. Many kids will enjoy this for years to come!
Congratulations to the team for being granted a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO) for our Swope Middle School project! To celebrate this achievement our entire site crew including subcontractors, as well as Swope Middle School teachers, enjoyed a delicious lunch from Butcher’s Kitchen Char-B-Que. Two lucky crew members on our subcontracting team scored some YETI swag in a raffle as a special thanks for all of their hard work on this project.
Students will be welcomed back on Monday for their first day of school! The 3-phase project included a new gym and basketball courts, a new two-story classroom building, a new kitchen, and renovations to the older section of the building including an updated HVAC system. A new multipurpose room, administrative offices, nurses clinic, and courtyard are currently under construction and will be turned over to WCSD in phases by the end of this year.
Our team had fun attending this year’s Art of Childhood fundraising gala event! The event raised over $600,000 throughout the night to help support The Children’s Cabinet and their mission to keep children safe and families together. We are proud to support this organization and all they do to help members of our community with many different resources, including one resource highlighted at this years event – free family counseling services.
We are happy to announce this year’s English Cottage-style playhouse, designed and built by our team for the live auction, raised over $3,700 for The Children’s Cabinet. Stay tuned for more photos soon of the playhouse at it’s new home!
United Construction Company (UCC) announces Sarah Schmidt as their new Manager of Employee Retention and Development, a newly-created position at the company. The promotion went into effect on Wednesday, June 1, as she receives her Associate Professional in Human Resources (aPHR) certification.
Schmidt was the Executive Administrator at UCC for more than three years, with a decade of office management, project coordination, executive assistance, and employee development experience. She will grow upon her skills in her new role at the company.
“I’m excited to mix my passion for employee and corporate development with my devotion to United Construction and its people,” said Schmidt. “I anticipate a great future ahead for the company, and I’m excited to be a part of its internal growth.”
Schmidt’s primary responsibilities are to support ongoing company operations and improve employee engagement, development, and retention. Under those responsibilities, she will have several duties that will further United Construction’s mission to maintain a great company culture and invest in the career development of UCC’s employees.
Schmidt will head several human resources functions in her new position as well. These include working with senior management to evaluate staffing needs of the company, supporting recruitment and onboarding efforts, keeping the company current on employment laws and regulations, helping with record-keeping and budgeting, and more. On the training and career development side, Schmidt will help conduct basic new hire training, assist in the preparation of career path development plans for employees, monitor ongoing staff training programs, create relevant training materials, help managers conduct performance evaluations and goal setting/mentoring, and building solid cross-functional relationships across all company locations and groups.
Sarah will also have a focus on maintaining company morale/welfare in her new role. She will implement and facilitate team building activities, develop ideas for employee involvement activities, maintain the company event calendar, and plan more social events.
“As our company continues to reach new heights, we identified an opportunity to enhance our focus on employee career development and retention, and Sarah was the perfect fit for this role,” said Mike Whittaker, President of United Construction. “This has been a career aspiration for her, and we are thrilled to support her career development and benefit other UCC employees in the process.”
The month of May marked an especially productive timeframe for the construction team at Swope Middle School. Site crews have reached completion or near completion on several aspects of both the interior and exterior of the new two-story classroom building and the existing classroom building.
“We are proud of the immense progress our team has made thus far at Swope,” said Casey Gunther, Operations Manager for United Construction. “This work is a testament to the dedication of our subcontractors, partners, and Washoe County School District.”
The roof atop the new classroom building is finished, and the building is dried in as well. The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing rough-ins are also substantially complete. Thanks to the quick work of our site crews, almost all walls and soffits are completely covered with drywall. Our team is now in the process of taping and texturing the interior walls, which will be followed by paint. On the exterior of the building, the areas in the north courtyard have been excavated for the six above-ground planters that are planned to be built. After the footings for the planters are poured, the forms will be stripped, and the concrete masonry units (CMUs) will be installed.
On the northwest corner of the new gym, the pad for the new chiller unit has been prepped for the concrete slab to be formed and poured. Crews have been working on the HVAC system in the attics of the existing classroom building after school every day, installing new duct work and mechanical equipment.
Concurrent with the physical work on site, United Construction has been meeting with their key subcontractors to plan the sequencing of all work planned to be performed during summer break.
Photos by Ryland Sweigard
Team United and their plus-ones attended the Summit Awards hosted by NAIOP Northern Nevada this weekend. We had a lovely time supporting so many commercial real estate companies and professionals who have done incredible work within our industry in Northern Nevada. We were proud to be an event sponsor this year!
Thank you, NAIOP, for a wonderful event!
Back in February, we announced that United Construction was finalist for the 2022 Nevada Business Magazine (NBM) Awards under the “Battle Born” category. To honor all of the finalists and announce the winners, the NBM hosted an upscale business luncheon at the Peppermill yesterday afternoon. Along with Design Manager Keith Deutscher and Marketing Manager Alana Ridge representing United, Northern Nevada businesses from a wide variety of industries and years in service attended the event to celebrate each other.
Out of the many nominations, United was in the Top 3 under the “Battle Born” category, which recognizes companies that have been in business for more than 25 years. We are thrilled to be among the best this year in this category. Congratulations to all of the winners and finalists!
Aristocrat Gaming, a global gaming content and technology company, recently held a groundbreaking ceremony at our planned logistics park in Henderson, Nevada. The company will be a tenant in one of the buildings, where they will manufacture slot machines and other gaming equipment.
Southern Nevada dignitaries, United Construction and their subcontractors, and hundreds of Aristocrat employees attended the event, excited to mark the beginning of the construction progress for their brand new building.
KLAS Channel 8 in Las Vegas covered the groundbreaking. The video clip that aired on TV can be found here.
We thank our Superintendent Kerry Brock for the logistical and on-site help and our Senior Project Manager Dane Horton for the planning support behind-the-scenes!
Students and staff at Swope Middle School are anticipating the completion of their brand new classroom building, as the site crews make notable progress witnessed by the Swope community.
“We are approaching new milestones that will help prepare us to welcome students and staff into their revamped learning space upon project completion,” said Casey Gunther, Operations Manager for United Construction. “We appreciate everyone’s patience and enthusiasm as we shape up the expansions and renovations at the school.”
In the new two-story classroom area, the on-site construction team is in the process of installing the new roof. Upon roof completion, the building will be dried-in. Crews have “one-sided” the drywall in several sections on the first floor and will continue this work on the second floor after roofing work is complete. After the building is dried-in, the team will be able to use a crane to install the new mechanical equipment onto the roof towards the end of this month. Additionally, all the metal stud framing is complete. Crews will continue to work on the rough-in of the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, and this process should be complete in the coming weeks.
Concurrent to the performance of the physical work on-site, United Construction is holding pre-installation meetings with key subcontractors to plan work on the existing classroom building. Their goal is to commence work that can be done before Washoe County School District releases for the summer, as well as the work that will need to be performed during summer break.
United Construction will continue to update neighbors with current construction information.
Photos by Ryland Sweigard