Coffman Engineers honored to receive recognition at the 2016 DBIA awards of Excellence for the Spokane Central Service Center.

The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), the organization that defines, teaches, and promotes design-build best practices, announced the 2016 Project of the Year and National Award of Excellence winners at the Design-Build Conference and Expo Awards dinner on November 3, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

A distinguished jury selected 30 projects, in nine categories, to receive Awards of Merit in recognition of exemplary collaboration and integration in design-build delivery, while achieving budget and schedule goals, and exceeding owner expectations. One project from each category was then singled out as ‘best-in-category’ as a National Award of Excellence winner. The jury also chose four outstanding projects for ‘special awards’ in Excellence in Design (Architecture), Excellence in Design (Engineering), Excellence in Process, and Excellence in Teaming. Finally, the jury chose one outstanding Project of the Year.

The Spokane Central Service Center received a ‘special award’ for  Excellence in Process. A team including OAC Services Inc., Garco Construction, Bernado Wills Architects, and Coffman Engineers worked with the City of Spokane to build a consolidated fleet maintenance and solid waste operations center for the City.

The project was designed to create operational efficiency and savings, and was the city’s first design-build project. Design-build was chosen to speed up construction and control costs to meet consolidation functions identified since 1983. A thorough, yet revised plan with a design-build approach was able to achieve this result.

The two-story, 57,500 sf Spokane Central Service Center is a $16.5 million facility located on the south side of a 32-acre, site in the Chief Garry Park Neighborhood that’s west of Nelson and north of Broadway.

The Center features:

-Consolidated repair and maintenance of the City’s large vehicle fleet in one location.

-Consolidated solid waste

 and street operations with fleet operations, including fueling stations, vehicle washing, and repair facilities, resulting in reduced travel time and fuel costs.

-Replaced aging facilities that were exceedingly inefficient with new, safe, and secure facilities for employees.

-Design for conversion to compressed natural gas for the City’s fleet of solid waste collection trucks.

“The City selected a design-build approach to this project to speed construction time and maintain better control over costs,” says Ken Gimpel, the City’s manager on the project and Assistant Public Works Director. “We were very pleased with our design-build team and our results.”

Coffman provided civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering services. During construction the design-build team used Coffman’s Building Information Model (BIM) to walk the City of Spokane staff through the completed design. This process led to several innovative improvements that were implemented before construction, ultimately saving on cost and time.

Coffman is honored to be recognized among other award-winning projects throughout the country for our design-build best practices and achievement in meeting owner expectations.