Morrison-Maierle Awarded Five Excellence Awards at the Montana Contractors’ Association Annual Convention

At the Montana Contractors’ Association Annual Convention last week, Morrison-Maierle was presented with five awards. The Morrison-Maierle Bozeman Office Building received Building Excellence Awards in the Best Commercial Category and Excellence in Craftsmanship, a special award to recognize exceptional work. A Concrete Excellence Award in the Paving Category went to the US Highway 2 - Havre Reconstruction project. Another Concrete Excellence Award, this time in the Industrial/Commercial Greater Than $5 Million Category, went to the St. Peter's Hospital Expansion and Renovation project. And lastly, a Concrete Excellence Award was given for the Lewis and Clark Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall and Grandstand project in the Agricultural Concrete Award Category. Brief descriptions of each project are provided below.

The Morrison-Maierle Bozeman office building is the fifth LEED® certified building in Montana and the first LEED Gold certified building. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is the U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system for designing and constructing the world’s greenest, most energy efficient, and highest performing buildings. The building was designed by ThinkOne Architects and Dick Anderson Construction headed up construction. The new facility received engineering support from Morrison-Maierle’s civil, structural, mechanical and electrical engineers.

In September 2004, St. Peter’s Hospital began a cost-effective expansion project to meet the current and future needs of Helena and the surrounding area due to the increasing population, aging demographics, and changing technology demands. Morrison-Maierle provided full-service structural engineering services throughout the design, detailing, and construction phases of the $42,000,000 expansion project located in a heavy seismic zone with a high emergency importance factor. Six buildings were designed and constructed for the hospital campus, including a four-story bed-wing, new emergency room, loading dock, MRI addition, expanded boiler plant and expanded ICU. The lateral force shear walls for the four-story building consisted of concrete with steel wide flange boundary columns anchored to the walls for framing connection simplicity and cost savings. Dick Anderson Construction was the general contractor and RTKL Associates, Inc. was the architect.

The US 2 Urban Reconstruction in Havre, Montana is the Montana Department of Transportation’s largest concrete pavement urban reconstruction project to date. In the city of Havre, US 2 serves as the primary arterial and business corridor for the community. With planning and design beginning in 2002, this $31.2 million reconstruction project included over 101,000 square yards of concrete pavement along 33 blocks of Havre’s main street. Extensive utility and storm drain reconstruction work consisted of 4.5 miles of drainage piping, relocations of major power, communication facilities, and water and sewer upgrades. Early identification of stakeholder concerns was key to addressing specific project needs early in the design and fostering community buy-in to the project. The city of Havre now has a long lasting roadway and enhanced community pride. Morrison-Maierle provided transportation, water resources, structural, construction engineering services. Nelcon, Inc. out of Kalispell was the general contractor.

The Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall and Grandstand are the first phase in the implementation of the future vision of the Helena fairgrounds. Morrison-Maierle provided structural engineering services for the new 41,000 square foot events hall and the adjacent 2,930-seat capacity grandstand structure designed by Mosaic Architecture. The events hall, consisting of a large clear-span pre-engineered steel building, required special foundation and slab design considerations. Also a pre-engineered structure, the Grandstand required coordination of the exposed concrete foundation support elements with the public gathering and concession spaces as well as restrooms that were constructed under the grandstand structure.