Project Name: Kenaitze Indian Tribe Education Center

Company Name: Stantec

Project Location: Kenai, Alaska United States

Project Information/Details: The Kenaitze Indian Tribe recently broke ground on its newest education center in Kenai, Alaska. The center focuses on the Tribal Council’s commitment to building a tribally owned, culturally appropriate education campus that consolidates core educational components and programs in one state-of-the-art, central facility. Design of the educational center is being led by a local team of architects and engineers from the Anchorage office of integrated design firm, Stantec. Blazy Construction is the general contractor. The new, 65,000-square-foot education center will include two wings. A basement and two-story education wing will house classrooms, meeting rooms, and administrative offices. The first floor will host Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms, dedicated to strengthening early learning programs through advocacy, education, and leadership. The second floor will feature open classroom space, and administrative offices will be in the basement. The second wing will house a multi-purpose room designed to meet the needs of the Tribe’s various programs. It will feature an elevated running track and will be able to host large events of up to 300 people. A central indoor plaza will serve as a main entrance lobby and a connector between the two wings. The building exterior is modern with clean and defined design lines, while referencing the values and traditions of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. A custom aluminum panel pattern at the round connector space references salmon skin, and accents of wood reclaimed from the community’s historic cannery represent the Tribe’s longstanding fishing traditions. The landscape features are an integral part of the design, with concrete plaza scorings mimicking the Kenai River. Plantings are strategically placed to bring the outdoors visually into the library and the multipurpose room. “We’re honored to collaborate with the Kenaitze Indian Tribe and lead the design for their education center,” said Giovanna Gambardella, Stantec’s project manager based in Anchorage. “Our goal is to deliver a design that fits the Tribe’s vision to host our community’s most important asset: children and youth. Together with the Tribe, we designed a facility tailored to its community needs and values by creating a safe space for children, parents, educators, families, and elders to enjoy.” The facility is at the intersection of South Forest Drive and the Kenai Spur Highway, just across the street from the National Guard armory. The education center will be near City of Kenai land and a municipal park, and is an easy walk from the Kenai beach. Stantec is providing all key building disciplines, including architectural and civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering. Stantec also completed an environmental assessment of the site. Nancy Casey Planning and Design, a Kenai-based landscape architect, collaborated closely with Stantec’s interior designer Carel Nagata and civil engineer Jake Alward to tie exterior elements to the interiors. The project is expected to be complete in late 2021. The Kenaitze Indian Tribe was federally recognized as a sovereign, independent nation in 1971 under the Indian Reorganization Act as amended for Alaska. Today, the tribe has more than 1,600 tribal members who live across the Kenai Peninsula and beyond; it employs about 300 full-time and part-time employees.

Project Name: Chase Center

Company Name: Langan Engineering and Environmental Services

Project Location: San Francisco, California United States

Project Information/Details: The winner of the 2020 DFI Outstanding Project Award (OPA) is the team of Langan Engineering and Environmental Services (geotechnical and environmental services), Malcolm Drilling Company (foundation contractor), and Condon-Johnson & Associates (shoring contractor) for the innovative foundation design of the Chase Center in San Francisco. The award is being presented during the DFI 45th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations, October 13-16, 2020. Chase Center, the new home of the Golden State Warriors, covers four city blocks and will provide seating for 18,000 fans, as well as 58,000 sq ft (5,388 sq m) of office/lab, event space, retail, restaurants and underground parking. The Chase Center is being developed in the Mission Bay area, which has poor ground conditions. A tidal cove thousands of years ago, the area was built up in the early 1900s from thousands of cubic yards of sand, rocks, dirt and debris that came from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Besides the engineering and construction challenges that process entailed, the team had to excavate as deep as 30 ft (9.1 m) to fit all the programming on site. The unprecedented depth and size of the excavation presented challenges with dewatering, maintaining a stable subgrade and supporting the excavation. In addition, the foundation conditions varied significantly across the site, with bedrock as shallow as 30 ft (9.1 m) and as deep as 130 ft (39.6 m). According to Lori Simpson, P.E., P.G., vice president of Langan, the company that provided geotechnical, environmental, dewatering and civil excavation consulting services on the project, “Our team provided innovative solutions for foundations, cutoff wall design, soil treatment and dewatering system design.” This year, DFI is also awarding two Special Recognition Awards. The recipients are: Schnabel Engineering, which submitted a project at West Virginia’s Yeager Airport, where a team stabilized and restored the safety area for Runway 5; and Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers for rehabilitating New York City’s Canarsie Tunnel for the L Line subway due to Superstorm Sandy damage, including tunnel feature upgrades. The OPA was established in 1997 to recognize the superior work of DFI members. A committee selects the projects based on size, scope and challenges of the project; degree of innovation and ingenuity exercised; and uniqueness of the solution to the difficulties of the job.

Project Name: MU NextGen Precision Health Institute

Company Name: University of Missouri

Project Location: Columbia, Missouri United States

Project Information/Details: The University of Missouri hosted a virtual topping off ceremony to celebrate the last steel beam being placed atop the NextGen Precision Health Institute today. As the cornerstone of the statewide NextGen Precision Health Initiative, the institute will be the home of translational research and life-saving precision health solutions that will benefit Missourians and the world. “As our communities continue to face unprecedented uncertainty and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working to address today’s urgent health care needs,” UM System President and MU Interim Chancellor Mun Choi said. “This tragic situation only encourages our efforts in precision medicine, and this construction milestone reminds us that the NextGen Precision Health Institute is critical to the future of our world-class research and the long-term health of Missourians in every part of our state.” One of the project’s newest leaders is Richard Barohn, MU’s executive vice chancellor for health affairs. As the NextGen Precision Health Institute’s executive scientific director, Barohn will work closely with five faculty research leads in the areas of cancer, population health, cardiovascular, neurological, basic and emerging research. “The NextGen Precision Health Initiative will help us translate fundamental research from laboratories into effective treatments and devices, which will benefit Missourians as well as the rest of the country and world,” Barohn said. “This is an incredibly exciting time to be at Mizzou. With all the recent progress on the NextGen Precision Health Institute, we are poised to become national leaders in precision medicine.” The 265,000 square-foot, five-story precision health facility will provide space for more than 60 principal investigators to conduct research in areas such as engineering, medicine, arts and science, veterinary medicine and animal sciences. The building will include laboratories, classrooms and innovative space for faculty, researchers and industry partners to collaborate. In addition to harnessing and supporting the research activities of the UM System’s four universities and health system, the NextGen Precision Health Initiative is expected to accelerate medical breakthroughs, increase collaboration among UM System scientists and industry partners, attract research funding, generate jobs and train a new generation of health care scientists and practitioners. Construction on the facility, which is located on MU’s campus near University Hospital, began during Summer 2019. The expected completion date is Oct. 19, 2021.