Everything’s Bigger in Texas –– Even This Episode: A Texas-Sized Recap of the 2024 DBIA Conference (Part 1)

The 2024 DBIA Design-Build Conference & Expo in Dallas was so big –– you know what they say about Texas –– we had to break the November episode of the Design-Build Delivers Podcast into two parts. 

In this special episode, we’re bringing you the highlights from the 2024 Design-Build Conference & Expo in Dallas, held Nov. 6-8. Part 1 –– out now –– kicks off with interviews featuring the Project/Team Award winners, including team members from the Holt Watters Field Camp, NREL Research and Innovation Laboratory and the Project of the Year winning Applied Research Building at the University of Arizona. Plus, hear from the Student Competition finalist teams from the University of Colorado Boulder and NewSchool of Architecture and Design as well as the winning team from the University of Arizona.

Then, be sure to join us for Part 2, airing Monday, Dec. 2, as we sit down with Brunelleschi Lifetime Achievement Award winner Don Warren, FDBIA, and Distinguished Leadership Award winners Emily Galliers, MCIOB, DBIA, and Rod Pope, PE, FDBIA. This super-sized episode is packed with interviews, award highlights and a whole lot more. Don’t miss a minute!

Guests:

University of Arizona Applied Research Building
Brian Brandis, University of Arizona
Andrew Gillett, McCarthy Building Companies
Katie Stachler, SmithGroup
Dana Sylvester, University of Arizona

Holt Watters Field Camp
Ellie Mango, Bespoke Project Solutions
Brandon "Shaggy" Neahusan, Bespoke Project Solutions

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Research and Innovation Laboratory (RAIL)
Bret Cummock, NREL

Cardinal Design-Build (University of Arizona)
Macie Balkan
Kenadee Carruthers
Reuel Florendo
Lauren Johnson
Lily Trenkamp

Rocky Mountain Design-Build (University of Colorado Boulder)
Benjamin Hewitt
Katie Irvin
Julian Kotara
Mary Grace Lehmkuhl
Dana Majer

Altitude Design Development (NewSchool of Architecture and Design)
James Armendariz
Jade Giron
Boston McCullough
Henry Vergil

Amanda Ayles
Portfolio Project Manager, Estimating, HCSS

Access all our free design-build resources and learn more about Design-Build Done Right® at dbia.org.

DBIA members are shaping the future, one successful collaboration at a time.

Chapters

• 0:09 Reliving the DBIA 2024 Design-Build Conference & Expo
• 1:53 Celebrating the Project of the Year: University of Arizona Applied Research Building
• 9:06 Design-Build Done in the Cold: Holt Watters Field Camp
• 18:32 Flexible Lab Spaces for the Future: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Research and Innovation Laboratory (RAIL)
• 23:48 An All-Women Winning Team: Cardinal Design-Build
• 33:04 Graduating from Excel: Rocky Mountain Design-Build
• 38:33 A Balancing Act: Altitude Design Development
• 44:36 HeavyBid Brings Realism to Student Projects

Transcript

Erin Looney  00:09

If you've been to DBIA, design, Build Conference and Expo, you know just how jam packed it is, and the 2024 event in Dallas was no exception, from General Sessions to educational tracks, pre conference events on VDC and leadership networking on the expo hall floor, tons of food, wild and crazy weather that actually kept many of us there a little longer than we'd planned. Parties filled with cowboy hats, bandanas, line dancing, some famous cheerleaders. And then there are the awards. It really was a lot, but in the absolute best possible way, it's also very hard, I'd say impossible, to capture in a single episode. So we're not even going to try. There were so many honors, so many awards worth reliving, that we're breaking this month's episode into two parts, just like the best old school two part special episodes of your favorite TV shows. Pretty sure that's a reference you have to be of a certain age to get I am Aaron Looney. I am of a certain age. And this is part one of a special two part episode of the design build delivers podcast brought to you by us, CAD and Archons company. We feature members of the teams behind some of the big award winners this year, including project of the year, University of Arizona applied research, building chairs, award winning, hold waters, field camp and four award winner, National Renewable Energy laboratories, Research and Innovation laboratory. Then we'll celebrate the next phase of the design build awards universe with the National Student design build competition finalists from second place, University of Colorado, Boulder, third place, new School of Architecture and Design and the winning team from the University of Arizona. Big year for U of A was there a conspiracy afoot? You'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, let's kick things off with the University of Arizona Applied Research Building in Tucson. This groundbreaking project took home project of the year, as well as best in design for architecture and a national award of excellence and of merit in educational facilities. This facility is home to cutting edge research labs, an absolutely massive thermal vacuum chamber, an anechoic chamber, lots of fun, space secrets and a whole lot of other cool stuff you'll actually learn about in an upcoming episode in early 2025 for now, we're focused on the awards in Dallas. I spoke with Andrew Gillette, the pre construction director at McCarthy building companies, Dana Sylvester, construction phase project manager from the University of Arizona, Katie stackler from Smith group, who helped lead the design portion, and Brian Brandis, Director of Planning and Design at the University of Arizona. It's been a big year for the University of Arizona. At this conference, your team found out they are the DBIA National Design Build student competition winners and this project, now that we're talking about the university's new Applied Research Building, took home several awards. Very important question, did your new president pay us at DBIA to talk about the school so much. Is this some underhanded advertising here?

Dana Sylvester  03:05

I can answer that absolutely not. We have a new president, and he's only been on board for less than a month. Yes, so no money, fast hands. I can promise that you know yes, that I know

Erin Looney  03:18

we'll never tell you guys, remember, I have to tell but it's also wonderful for you all, because you get some bragging rights. So let's now tick off those awards. We'll go through them. Project of the Year. You also got the excellence and the merit awards for educational facilities and the best in design for architecture. Can you tell us what it means to the project team and to the university to get all of this recognition and how this award reflects the project's impact and its excellence.

Brian Brandis  03:44

It certainly is going to bring a lot of recognition to the university. This is obviously a high profile project now, and it's certainly going to, I think, help boost when we go for recruitment of researchers and students and enrollment, and hopefully continue with getting us grants for more research, and it's becoming a bigger incubator, which is really what we're trying to do, and foster that research collaboration that this building was designed for.

Dana Sylvester  04:13

And I think another big impact of this, it's already in a very prominent location on campus. It's right next to a major thoroughfare for bikes and for walking, for our students and faculty. But now that there's more recognition for this building, I think it's going to draw more attention and more interest to find out what's going on behind the scenes. A lot of the research was off campus and scattered around in different areas, so this brought all the researchers together in one building, and it's going to highlight our integration Space Studies, which Arizona is very well known for, we are top in the country for, yes, for several years. So that'll help future. Space Science Research is

Andrew Gillett  04:50

the design builder. I think what we found so validating about receiving these awards and the recognition is that that was something that we set out to do. We wrote that down. As part of our mission statement, as a goal that we would bring, that we would bring recognition to what the university was doing, that this project, working together, would be recognized as a leader in design build. So to see that we accomplished that, that we worked together to achieve that goal, it was just so validating for the whole team. We were really excited and appreciative of

Katie Stachler  05:18

it. And winning the architecture award, of course, was very exciting for us, and we worked very hard to make sure that the exterior of the building was designed such that it reflected the mission and the projects that were happening inside, and the design build delivery method really allowed us to push the envelope, literally on this and create a very iconic and evocative architecture with the assistance of the design build partners.

Erin Looney  05:51

And I can tell you a little inside baseball, I was in the discussion about the architecture best in design, and that was really one of the things I kept coming back to. I mean, it was, it was a debate, but that was the characteristic that rose to the top, ultimately, in the conversation. So you nailed that one. And

Brian Brandis  06:07

I'll just add to that we were talking about it last night after winning the award, that that wasn't the original intent when the RFQ went out, the RFQ actually mentioned that this was supposed to be just a functional building, and wasn't really meant to be kind of an iconic building, which just goes to show that with design build, you can still get a great and amazing, iconic building and still meet your budgets and your schedules and have great design. So just to show that it wasn't our original intention to have something this great, and it turned out that way.

Erin Looney  06:43

So let's look ahead now. The project, huge success, obviously fascinating project. I wish we had two hours. What are the team's plans for working together in the future? And so how do you plan to carry forward the collaboration, the innovation, the strategic success that made the applied research building such a standout.

Andrew Gillett  07:02

The testament to our success is that this exact team is working on our next progressive design build. We're working together to we're about 70% of the way through design, through design development on the Center for Applied molecular immune I mean, go for

Katie Stachler  07:19

it, Center for Advanced molecular and immunological therapies, which we call CAMI Yeah, it's a good idea, yes,

Andrew Gillett  07:27

because that's a lot so to get the team back together on the next project, again, a project that'll be so beneficial for research and will be so impactful to our communities and our state in Arizona, helping To bring research there. I think that's a testament to the success we all wanted to do it all over again, the University

Dana Sylvester  07:45

of Arizona campus and Phoenix. So that's not the Tucson campus gotcha,

Katie Stachler  07:50

but it is the largest project that the university has awarded. We were very proud to have delivered on the ARB project and then be chosen for the CAMI project,

Brian Brandis  08:01

and it's another area that University of Arizona is strong in. They did space, and now they're moving on to our bio sciences research. And I'm sure you're learning a ton on that end of research and science, so you're probably getting out your Google for that as well to learn all those terms and make a career change. So it just goes to show that it worked. And I think there was a lot of lessons learned as well. I think you guys have been applying a lot of what you learned on ARB to the Cami and just trying to improve the process as we go each time. And

Katie Stachler  08:32

we already have that trust all with each other. So we're hitting the ground running exactly where we left off on the prior successful project. We'll

Erin Looney  08:40

be seeing that one, I'm assuming, in how many 2027, okay, so we'll see you again for the same conversation, but we're going to talk about what was it again? The center, center for

Katie Stachler  08:51

advanced molecular and immunological therapies. The Center

Erin Looney  08:55

for Advanced molecular and immunological therapies. Therapies? Yes, yes. Well, congratulations on not just getting that name correct, but on all of these wins. Okay, now that we're back from space, let's go to Antarctica, where the Holt waters field camp is located. This project earned the chairs award for its truly one of a kind story, bringing together innovative design, logistics and construction in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. Holt waters is a remarkable example of design build success. They overcame immense challenges and provided a sustainable and functional base that felt a little like home in some of the harshest conditions, the kind of conditions you could not give me enough money to be part of. But I got to chat with people who do have that level of bravery. Brandon Shaggy, nahuzen, the Director of Design and Construction at Bespoke project solutions, and Ellie mango, the Field Operations Director at Bespoke. They did not invite a penguin to the interview, but I'm going to try to forgive them. Let's not bury the lead the Holt waters field came. Camp team got to work with penguins on this project, right?

Brandon "Shaggy" Neahusan  10:04

We did, yeah,

Erin Looney  10:05

that was a really big buzz in our conversations. Everybody was like, Oh, look at the penguins. And, you know, there's a building we need to look at the penguins are adorable. Of course, the real lead here is actually, are the awards? Congratulations to you on a handful of awards. So let's start with that chair's award, though it highlights community impact and Triple Bottom Line success, and that award is actually chosen out of all the projects that are submitted by the DBIA national board chair. So how did this project, approach to environmental, social and economic sustainability set it apart?

Brandon "Shaggy" Neahusan  10:39

First of all, we were so absolutely humbled and just honored for those awards. We tried to do things that are right to do, but to be recognized and be seen for that was really wonderful. You know, we have a group of scientists that are living in Antarctica, and they dedicate a very not small part of their lives to being there. It's their home. They're away from their families. This will be the first Christmas that mango and I have both been home for the last two years. So it was important to us to not only design and build something that was a nice place to go, it's a comfortable place to have a meal. It's not cheap to deploy people to Antarctica. You have to keep a lot of that in mind. So when we looked at the design, we ran snow scouring and deposition models so we would understand how the building was going to react with the landscape. Every hour that a scientist spends digging out a building is an hour that they're not spending doing their science. So we use fluid dynamics. We used a lot of thermal studies to really make sure we had a really tight shell. So every dollar that we spend heating it is a good dollar spent.

Ellie Mango  11:49

You know, what a passion project this was for everyone involved. Like Shaggy was saying the scientists are, you know, they're because they love their work, and then when you're there, that's your life, that's your home, that's your family, your community, everything. And being in Antarctica, you have to work with nature. You're at the whim of the tides and the animals and the weather and precipitation and winds and all sorts of stuff. You're not in a world run by humans. So you really have to change kind of your mindset when you're trying to plan things like a massive project like this,

Erin Looney  12:23

you said something that really resonated. And you're in a world not run by humans, which is something a lot of people don't get to experience, especially months at a time. And so the theme from both of you was creating a space that was also not just a workspace, but home. The more you talk about it, the less it sounds like a small project. But of course, by definition at DBIA, it does qualify as small. So one of the things I think that really made it stand out was just how how much you were able to do with the smaller budget, which strategies did your team use to maximize that value and that efficiency. You know, especially given that you were in a world not run by humans,

Brandon "Shaggy" Neahusan  13:04

part of the brilliance of Noah and the Western Fisheries Division, but particularly Dr George waters, who is the director of this group. You think about what he did, he went and he found a little construction company that has done a bunch of stuff in Antarctica and his bunch of stuff in the polar regions, asked them to team up with a bunch of grad students, essentially from Colorado, building workshop. We all designed the whole thing together. The students got to build it in the test build in Denver. Our crew came in and took it down, put it in containers, shipped it and then built it. So it really goes back to Dr waters that he had this vision of just doing something a little bit different, which I think is the whole idea about DBIA, right. There's a lot of trust that goes on. And in this project, particularly, I felt like it really was showcased. What you can get out of a design build process if it's done right. And

Ellie Mango  13:58

just one technical note during the design phase, one of the parameters was that this project couldn't take up more space than the old structure. So this really kind of difficult parameter that forced a lot of creativity and problem solving from the very beginning to how do you get more out of the same. Let's

Erin Looney  14:21

talk about one of the other things that created quite the buzz with our jury and with our staff, besides the penguins during construction, your team overcame some frankly wild challenges, including a boat capsizing incident. So could you share how your team responded to this?

Brandon "Shaggy" Neahusan  14:38

The boat capsizing just sucked. I mean, there's, there's no two ways to say that, from human aspect, number one, let's make sure everything's okay, but way before that, as part of our risk mitigation strategy, so we went from a big boat down and took all the material off with a jib crane and set that down on a 20 foot. A zodiac, and then the Zodiac would then take that about a mile and a half to shore. So that was part of our risk. We're doing this 500 times. What happens when a giant rogue wave hits a boat? So when it did happen, we just followed the plan. Number one, secure human life. Number two, save the fuel and the batteries. Get those out of the ocean, and then let's worry about the material last. And it's important to note too, we had a tender boat with that, so the response was absolutely immediate. We never do anything solo in Antarctica. We always have the contingency. We always have a backup plan. Yeah, that one was what it was, but we were able to save everything and get it up. And it was literally because we had talked about it so much previous to even doing it, there really wasn't even much thought when it happened. We just kind of followed the plan that we'd always talked about material damage would have been another one for us, right? We lose a window, and that's it. Again. We just have to think about how we do that during the prefab stage. How do we pack that? How we secure that, to make the three days across the Drake Passage, which is probably the most dangerous ocean passageway in the world, it's hard to be smarter than frozen rocks and snow sometimes, but you have to be you have to think everything out and make a plan and follow it. That's sort of how we dealt with it.

Ellie Mango  16:18

The teamwork aspects of solving problems in the field is absolutely crucial to not just the success of a project in general or a field season in general, but just daily life. Because whether or not it was the day a boat capsized, something else would happen. There's so many things that just pop up during the day that are really hard to anticipate. Even if you've done a really thorough job with your risk assessments and mitigation strategies and field plans, there'll be something that comes up for sure, and you need to be able to, yeah, rely on the team to overcome those challenges as they arise in the field.

Erin Looney  16:58

I do have one more very important question for you, since you're going to be home for the first time in two years for the holidays, do you have any big holiday plans that probably don't involve snow?

Brandon "Shaggy" Neahusan  17:10

My wife has a lot of really big plans for me. There is nothing I can say no to in this holiday season. You want lights all the way top that tree? I'm gonna figure out how to get them up there. Absolutely. I would love to go to the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Botanical Gardens, which I would say, never in any universe, but we're doing it this time. Man, it's going to be awesome too.

Ellie Mango  17:35

Yeah, being at the whim of whatever your spouse or family wants to do is, yeah, it's exciting. Just gonna lean into the holiday spirit. I'll be excited to not be sleeping in a tent. That'll be nice.

Erin Looney  17:50

Pretty good waking up with a sad twig as your decoration, the light bulb. Are you interested in sustainable design and construction practices, but concerned about profitability, us, CAD, an arkons company helps forward thinking. ENR, top ranked AEC firms in mitigating risk and driving profit through digitalization, using Autodesk AEC technology to learn more, contact us. Cad.com/dbia for a free 30 minute consultation. That's us. Cad.com/e that's usc.com/dbia And rounding out this group of project team award winners is the National Renewable Energy laboratories, Research and Innovation Laboratory, or NREL rail for short. This is in Golden Colorado, and it isn't just any lab. It's a space designed to be flexible and adaptable for cutting edge research, from plastics upcycling to next gen batteries and energy materials. They've built it so that as research evolves, the lab can evolve too with cool features like modular systems and a micro grid connection for future tech, including a hydrogen fuel cell. And this isn't just a cool project, it's a multi award winner too, picking up the best in process Award for Best Value, the Enlightened Owner Award and the Excellence in merit awards in industrial process and research facilities, with four awards. Clearly, this project is something special. I got to speak with Brett comic nrels, Program Director for project management and construction, in the afterglow of the previous night's awards ceremony. Brett gave us a behind the scenes look at the project and how they managed to make something so innovative on budget and ahead of schedule. One of the awards you won was the best in process for best value. So congratulations on that. Using Best Value procurement, what specific strategies helped your team maximize project value and align with nrels ambitious goals.

Bret Cummock  19:52

When we started back in 2009 we brought in trainers from DBIA to teach us how to. Do it, we hired DBIA certified owners advisors to help us create the program. We have always embraced DBIA best practices to the extent that we truly can within our federal government restrictions, believing that they allowed us to be able to get teams that were very innovative and creative, then what we also have done is created a very robust award fee program, and it's truly behavior based. We said we don't buy scope, we buy behavior. We want you to be a partner. You're going to actually be designing with us, because we know that what we do is not easy to define in a scope of work up front.

Erin Looney  20:45

So you also won the Enlightened Owner Award. This is an award that emphasizes visionary, collaborative owners and people who have done this before and done it well and continue to do it well. And you are an owner that, obviously that fits that description. So how did nrels approach as an enlightened owner, foster innovation and build a positive team environment on this project? Well,

Bret Cummock  21:10

thank you. We have done that by, you know, a philosophy of being fair and reasonable, of incentivizing partnership, of giving them projects that we believe are inspiring. We've developed a program, as I said, with a lot of input from DBIA to try to align with DBIA best practices as we've been evolving those we've been intentionally trying to align with DBIA. We have developed the program with that intention to foster collaboration. It just was wonderful that the way we've been choosing to do it has aligned so well.

Erin Looney  21:48

You also took home two other awards, the merit award, which you did know about before you arrived, and you were the Excellence Award winner in the industrial process and research category, which really highlights the impact of this project, because the competition is very stiff. What elements of the rail project do you think made it a standout? What

Bret Cummock  22:08

helps ours stand out is that we are trying to create something that is impactful to not only the community, to the state, but to the nation. We're not in it for profit being government. We're in it to help deliver our mission for the betterment of what we are charged to do by Department of Energy. NREL has developed, over time, a culture of wanting to be innovative, collaborative, and I think it showed in this project that our design build partner support and send and Davis partnership, really were excited to be a part of the team and to be able to do something with an owner who understood the positive benefits of design build and they understood the parameters from the beginning, they knew we had fixed budgets. They knew we had ways to say, we want to maximize flexibility. And I think it helps their team and our team to want to get better. I

Erin Looney  23:14

think you did that pretty successfully. And we're going to see 567, awards for the next project. We hope.

Bret Cummock  23:21

We do have some wonderful projects on the horizon. We do work with our partners and intentionally celebrate the incremental milestones along the project. Realizing these projects are hard. They're very complex. Each one of these is an achievement we understand that we can't do it alone, and we need very good partners.

Erin Looney  23:48

Well, we've just heard from the teams leading the charge and design build today. But what about tomorrow? Get ready to meet the rising stars, the students who are already proving they've got what it takes to build the DBIA award winning projects of the future. The DBIA National Design Build student competition features the best and the brightest design build professionals of the future going head to head in a thrilling competition. These teams not only demonstrated their technical expertise, but also their creativity and teamwork, just like the professionals they'll soon be working with the winning team of the 2024

24:22

DBIA National Design

24:23

Build student competition. The

24:25

winning team is Cardinal design build,

Erin Looney  24:30

that's right, the University of Arizona team. Cardinal design build took home the top honors. See, I told you something's up with the University of Arizona. Their hard work, dedication and collaboration really paid off, and will dive into their journey to victory in just a moment. Then we'll hear from the second place Rocky Mountain design, built from University of Colorado Boulder and third place, altitude design development from the New School of Architecture and Design. So let's talk to the University of Arizona team. First Cardinal design. Build includes seniors Macy Balkan and Kennedy Carruthers and juniors Lauren Johnson, Lily trenkamp and Team Captain Ray Well florendo, they all came in for an interview just moments after learning the adverse weather in Dallas had canceled their flights home. Somehow they kept it upbeat. Somehow they held it together. I don't know. Could it have been the feeling of winning first things first? Congratulations. Thank you. And it's actually been a really big year for your university. At the Design Build Conference in Expo, I'm suspicious that there's a partnership happening. We don't know about your school's new Applied Research Building. Have you seen it? Oh, it's awesome, gorgeous. That's probably gonna play really well with the team when I tell them that you guys are the DBIA National Design Build student competition winners for 2024 so first things we gotta ask is, how does that feel good?

Lauren Johnson  25:59

Initially, it was a little unreal. We were not exactly expecting it, so it was awesome for us to have that moment. It

Reuel Florendo  26:06

feels great knowing that we brought the University of Arizona to its fourth year streak of being in the top three. Oh,

Erin Looney  26:14

look at that. Okay, what does this accomplishment? This big deal not being in the top three. Who cares you're number one this time. What does it mean to your team and to each of you, and what do you believe set your proposal apart from your competition? I feel like we're just very personable. I

Lily Trenkamp  26:32

feel like we got up there and just showed who we are and how connected we've gotten in these past few months working together on this project. We just stood out because we're just so connected and really have love and put our whole hearts into the

Erin Looney  26:44

project. And you think that showed through

Macie Balkan  26:46

to the judges? Yes, we probably all have a little bit of imposter syndrome, just because, I don't know, we've been, obviously, in the engineering program for four years, and now we're on this club, and now we're at the national level, placing first place, and that's just a little bit unreal to me, thinking all five of us out of all of those, what 2230 teams are number one. That's kind of crazy. We put a lot of hard work into it, and we're really glad that it made off. I also

Kenadee Carruthers  27:17

think one of the things that set us apart was how passionate we were about our company itself, also, like each of the parts we did, I know Macy loves her schedule. That's her baby. Like she knows everything about it. They're asking her questions, and she was so excited to answer them. And also, just our company values, because we just came up with it. And so we're like, we're in Bozeman, Montana. We were about cozy, homey feel, and we just kind of came up with everything that our company represents. And I think that we just all became really passionate about it throughout the process. I'm gonna give you a little tip, never tell people you have imposter syndrome, because you're not an imposter. You belong here. Don't belittle your accomplishments with it. It's so hard. Yeah, it

Macie Balkan  27:51

just doesn't feel like made it,

Erin Looney  27:53

but you did. So that's the part you focus on. You did make it. You are here. You are number one

Lauren Johnson  27:58

from the design side. Lily and I were more in charge of our design, and it was definitely a little bit more challenging this year, because we were not given a specific program when it came to design, we've all been in airports before. You know, multiple times it's something that's normal to us, but you don't really think about every little thing that needs to be included in that and normally you would have that program, you would have clients tell you what they want to see from you, at least big ticket items that they want from you. So making that up all on our own was it was a challenge to get it started, but once we did it, it flew by. Last time that we did this, we did have the existing design, and then there was no HCSS or anything like that, so we heavily relied on submittals from years past to generate our ideas for this year. The setup of the RFQ and the RFP this year was definitely a lot different.

Reuel Florendo  29:01

We didn't need to rely on past years material, because there was not much that we could really take from Did you

Erin Looney  29:09

like having more information on the front end, or did you prefer this wide open? Do it the way you want to approach?

Reuel Florendo  29:16

I don't think I did have any preference. But one thing is, it's hard to think outside of the box when there is no box is really just dependent on the team. And I think our we were really able to carry through even though we didn't have a box. Well,

Erin Looney  29:32

obviously whatever box you created worked something. I noticed members of the audience, as you were being announced, were kind of murmuring as here's the here's the winners. And you know, we're going, you know what? I noticed something about this team. Do you want to guess what it was? So let's talk about that for a minute. What do you think it signals as being an all woman team and winning this thing? What do you think it signals to other students, other younger people, your mentor? Functionality, like it or not, you're role models,

Macie Balkan  30:02

even in still in classes these days, you're still treated a little bit differently by your peers because you're a girl, and being able to go up there in front of everyone and being an all girls team just shows how powerful you are and how confident we were, and how we have worked past anyone who's got less of us at points, because that still does happen sometimes. Definitely it shows that we're powerful and we are smart. We smarter, but yeah, definitely power and confidence and just that we can do it.

30:35

We were super excited that we were an all girl team. We from the beginning, we like that our company is going to be woman owned. We're going to wear all pink for our presentation. So I think even winning and just coming forward wearing all pink, I just thought it was a powerful moment for us that was planned business casual shopping

Lauren Johnson  30:55

that I'm really proud of us for, for being all female, because in this industry, especially, even just walking around in the hotel and in the conference, we're saying to each other, wow, there's a lot of men here. And so being able to see not only our female role models that are here, but also becoming role models for any of the female engineers to come is it's been a blessing for us. All right,

Erin Looney  31:22

I'm actually going to pick on you for a couple minutes. Lauren, you also took the award for best individual presenter, so congratulations for that. So how do you believe good presentation skills and speaking skills in your career? How did that help with this win, and how is it going to help you in the future? It's really

Lauren Johnson  31:38

funny to me, because I was incredibly nervous. I was shaking and I was sweating and I was thinking that was coming through and oh my gosh, I'm messing everything up. But I think that being able to have such a great connection with my teammates definitely helped. There's a lot of support and collaboration that went into our project, like one person can't win the competition. You know, it was definitely a huge team effort, and I'm very grateful that I had them to lean on. And I think just being surrounded by them put me a little bit more at ease. Bill Hasbrouck

Erin Looney  32:16

told us a little secret. He said he was talking to you about your easy going and confident presentation style. And he said you just really had it together and had the air of someone who, as I say, has been there before. And he told us that you told him your trick was my hands

Lauren Johnson  32:33

were freezing. It was so cold in that conference room, and I am a very, very cold person to begin with. And yeah, my hands were actually, like, freezing. I They were like, going solid. They were so cold. And so I ended up putting them in my pockets. And I think that also helped cut me at ease as well. And I stopped the fidgeting and moving back and forth. I was like, Ah, that's better.

Erin Looney  33:01

And no one knew. The University of Colorado. Boulder took second place in the competition, putting up an admirable fight. The team featured juniors Mary Grace, LEM cool and Julian Katara, alongside seniors Katie Irvin, Benjamin Hewitt and team captain Dana Major. This talented group showcased their skills, their creativity and their dedication throughout the competition, the DBIA National Student design build competition is huge, 22 teams, 18 universities and colleges, and you were top three, number two. So obviously, to get there, long path, a lot of work. What aspects of your project are you the most proud of and how has this experience prepared you for future projects in your careers? A

Katie Irvin  33:45

lot of us are going into construction, some design, I think, for all of us, knowing how the front end of how projects are one having experience in that is super helpful. Then going into executing those projects,

Dana Majer  33:58

also the commitment and ownership that everyone took on this project from the start, like this is totally a choice to do this, all five of us coming together, and really from the start, everyone was super committed, which I think also is why we were so successful.

Erin Looney  34:13

So no one's hanging a grade over your head, right?

Julian Kotara  34:17

As someone who you know probably won't do this in my career, I was enjoyable to work with such knowledgeable people and kind of learn about different aspects, especially of construction management and just how that works out in the field, and how proposals are built out. So even when I'm focusing on design aspects, I still have an understanding of how that project came to be and how we're able to build these things from the ground

Erin Looney  34:40

up. You get to come in a little bit later, or Yeah, so

Julian Kotara  34:43

I want to focus on lighting, lighting design, so kind of one very specific aspect of these projects. You never really see the proposal or design side. You're kind of just presented with a space that there's a vision to be lit up, essentially in

Mary Grace Lehmkuhl  34:59

coming up with. The design, the fixed fee, variable scope, was actually very challenging, because we had no guidance as to the scope of the project. And so honestly, Julian and I started with a piece of paper and went from there. And I think starting from the ground up with a partner and with someone else, and batting ideas off of each other was really helpful, and that's how we were able to come up with such an intricate design.

Erin Looney  35:22

And so Parsons Corporation, by the way, is who you can either thank or blame for giving you nothing to start with. They sponsored this year's competition and introduced this new delivery mechanism and project type. And on top of that, HCSS introduced the new cost estimating software. So how did having those resources. How did that help with project planning and team collaboration,

Benjamin Hewitt  35:45

the new estimating software? Once I really did utilize the training videos, I realized that going from an Excel sheet to heavy bid, I could have done the opposite, and kind of just listed off the things I put into heavy bid, I realized a little bit late that I didn't even really need my Excel sheets heavyweight kind of gave me everything I needed, and not just with calculations, but with their crews and just kind of their tabs for resource use. You could kind of put in a code and then come back to it, which was great, and it set up the whole

Erin Looney  36:14

process and not have to use pieces of paper. Yeah, right. There

Benjamin Hewitt  36:18

was a section originally that was supposed to be put in the appendix of just kind of like a printout of our Excel sheet, and it seemed really pointless, because just having a 30 page proposal and then, like a three or four page Excel sheet at the bottom seems so pointless. So I really liked using heavybit instead.

Erin Looney  36:33

Now, Katie, you are one of two people on the team who have done this before. Right? Any other thoughts on how resources like that changed your experience from the last time you competed. The

Katie Irvin  36:43

resources made it feel a lot more realistic as well, and then also moving into the fixed fee, variable scope, contract type was also for design, build. It felt like it gave us a lot more creative freedom, and then it also allowed us to think outside the box too, with our proposal and sort of how we were managing our approach. But I think that will probably go for every team. You know, it felt like all of our proposals were really different. We weren't all sort of trying to be the best, doing the exact same thing.

Erin Looney  37:13

And you've talked about this a little in some of your other answers, the collaboration bit of this, it's obviously the core of design build. What was your team's approach to ensuring everyone's different strengths were utilized throughout each phase of the competition.

Dana Majer  37:26

There was very open communication from the start of where everyone's strengths fell. With Katie and I, having done this last year, we had a better understanding of what was needed in each the estimate, the schedule, the design and more the technical writing, and then from there, we split up that way. But we didn't just like stay split up that way. We were constantly talking to each other and in communication, we had a running document of the themes that we wanted to make sure were carried through the entire proposal. So just that constant communication and collaboration, this

Katie Irvin  37:56

experience shouldn't just be you're doing what you're good at. We wanted to make sure that everyone had a learning opportunity. Got to learn how to perform technical writing, how to present in front of a panel and a large room of people. We all definitely got outside of our comfort zone and helped each other throughout that process. So definitely wanted to make sure we were all excelling in the scopes that we were most comfortable in, but also learning a lot too,

Erin Looney  38:21

and doing podcast interviews. Yeah? And you write that into the actual plan,

Katie Irvin  38:26

yeah, this is something I've never done.

Erin Looney  38:30

Glad to usher you through your first now, let's hear from the New School of Architecture and Design team, including Jade here on Boston, McCullough and Team Captain Henry Virgil, also phoning in from Well, I'll let him tell you. James armendaris, unfortunately, Anna Trujillo couldn't join the interview, but she was a vital member of the team throughout the competition. What aspects of your project are you most proud of, and how has that experience and what you're proud of and what you're not so proud of, how's that helped prepare you for future projects. One

Henry Vergil  39:01

of the things that I'm most proud of was the collaboration throughout the project, how we got closer and closer and getting this project done. Every phase was like a new challenge for us, how we all communicated with each other on how we were gonna split up the work, or how we were gonna help each other succeed.

Boston McCullough  39:19

My favorite thing was the passion. You can be on a lot of teams, but a lot of teams don't have passion, and you got to start telling people what to do, and they just don't like it. But everyone knew their roles, everyone knew their assignments, and the passion of all of us just I think that was one of the big factors on why we're top three, is, yeah, we were dedicated.

Jade Giron  39:36

My answer is going to be a bit more technical. I really liked the design of my work. Well, I was the one that worked on the design, and same, same for James Armendariz, it was a really dense timeline, so we had to work quickly and accurately

James Armendariz  39:49

with the design. We had to think in ways that we hadn't had to think before in this new environment of Montana. And with that, it came with a whole new set of challenges. The other thing with that is the. Overall work that we put out, even though that time frame was so small, the amount and quality of the work that this team was able to put out was absolutely amazing to me.

Erin Looney  40:08

So this year, you hinted at it a little. This year's competition focused on expanding an international airport, you said, in Montana. So terminal at an international airport in Montana. How did your team approach creating a detailed, realistic proposal in both the RFQ and RFP phases?

Henry Vergil  40:27

It was a lot of reading at the start to make sure that we follow what's on the paper and not doing too much, because that was a rule on there saying, do what we ask, not go beyond that, to try to get extra points or something like that, because you cannot focus on what they're asking for, and that could probably cost you more.

Jade Giron  40:45

And I would say schedule. We had really packed schedule, so we had to really collaborate on I'm free this day. I'm not free this day. So what are we doing today? We only have two hours to meet Parsons Corporation.

Erin Looney  40:55

They did something kind of interesting for you guys this year. In addition to sponsoring this year's competition. They introduced a new delivery mechanism and didn't give you a box. You had to create the box. And HCSS introduced cost estimating software this year as well. So how did these resources influence your project planning and that collaboration you spoke of?

Jade Giron  41:17

So I saw Anna Trujillo as our person working with hdss, and I saw how she had to work through the challenge of learning a new software it was created for the competition, so she really had to learn about it and ask the representative that they had for like, some questions that she had, and at some point, she was asking them at midnight, and they said, Sorry, we can't answer you tonight. Please reach back tomorrow.

Erin Looney  41:38

And you just talked about that schedule issue that you all had, how did Anna and how did the rest of you overcome, maybe the gap between asking the question and getting the answer you needed with very little free time.

Henry Vergil  41:50

We planned a little bit before that so she did have enough time to put it off till the next morning, when they were available. But a lot of sleepless nights.

Jade Giron  41:59

We did have sleepless nights, but we had great time management because we actually finished a project a week before so that we can send it to our faculty advisor, some of the people at school for proofreading and just getting an outside source to read through it and say, this looks good or this looks bad.

Erin Looney  42:14

So what you're telling me is you didn't wait until the last minute. Imagine that, right? So we've talked about the good stuff. What about the challenges? I would

Boston McCullough  42:25

say the deadlines to do a presentation, a sales presentation, less than a week, make it look good, animated graphics and all. It's very hard to do, and especially with an RFP proposal you got doing not just a month. It's more like three weeks, two and a half weeks, lot of late nights, lot of phone calls, a lot of meetings, like the first question you asked about what we brought to the table. And I thought it was just passion when it

James Armendariz  42:47

comes to difficulties. I think the biggest difficulty was not the project itself, of course, but balancing the

Jade Giron  42:53

project with life. I don't think we talked about why you're not here today. Yeah. So

James Armendariz  42:57

if I am a sergeant in the California Army National Guard, and I just came back from my basic leadership course, so I wasn't able to attend the conference due to my military service. We're all full time students, and have to balance school. I have to balance my military career and a job, and with that, being able to find the time to put in this much effort was incredibly straining on the entire team.

Erin Looney  43:18

Imagine having to do something other than this. So now that we're looking back, how do you plan to leverage that? The lessons, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, to your next step. So you've learned all this stuff. How is this going to help you get to whether it's grad school, job opportunity, any other goal you might have,

Boston McCullough  43:38

well, it's all about networking, and especially these competitions, I like how they combine it with the conference. So you get to meet the professional leaders and the industry professionals, especially with the judges, they offer advice and they debrief you on what you could have done better and things like that,

Henry Vergil  43:52

for the skills that we would use, and how close to real life that they were trying to make this competition. It's kind of like us getting our toes wet before we start jumping into when we start our careers, you

Erin Looney  44:04

get to do it without the danger of losing a paycheck. Growing

James Armendariz  44:08

up, I heard from a lot of my family who were contractors, that the architect doesn't know anything, the architect doesn't know anything, and being able to see the other side of the house from a construction management side in this competition really expanded my eyes to what the other trades are doing within the construction field, which gives me the experience that I can take forward with that understanding so I can get a job, have the experience to talk about construction management with confidence. Now,

Erin Looney  44:36

you heard some of the students talk about heavy bid and HCSS, this new estimating platform they used in this year's competition. We also spoke with Amanda Ailes from HCSS, who shared just how the heavy bid software played a key role in the student's experience, helping them create realistic cost estimates and bringing a real world application to their projects. Talk about the platform and the tools your company provided for the student competition. You. Tell us a bit about how the partnership came about. Bill Hasbrouck

Amanda Ayles  45:02

is the one to blame. He's the one that brought us in. He reached out to us because he was interested in the student competition, bringing in a little bit of civil as well as the commercial aspects of the competition, for the students to learn about multiple facets of construction. So we got pulled in because we built heavy civil construction software. We of course, wanted to be involved. Typically, the software that we provide is an installed desktop application. So it actually would have been really complicated for us to be involved in the student competition, because each individual team would have had to learn how to install the software individually. And so I pitched something a little different, something a little crazy. We are working on a web based version of our estimating application, and while it's still very early, I showed them where we were at at this point in time, and said, I do think it's capable of meeting where the students are right now, as far as estimating and putting together a quick RFP. And they agreed, and so we were able to train the students pretty fast on that system, and use that for the competition.

Erin Looney  46:23

What do you think are the most valuable skills the students are gaining this year from using heavy bid in this competition setting, particularly versus the way they were doing it before? Prior

Amanda Ayles  46:34

to this, my understanding is they were using an Excel file, which is completely standard in the industry, we all run on spreadsheets. What we wanted to do was build an understanding of how estimating teams work in the industry in a standard paradigm of breaking down large projects, thinking about costs, and then pricing those items, and so we were able to show them that by working within the heavy bid paradigm and system for this competition, what we really wanted to do was make sure that the students could communicate to the judges what they understood As much as possible about the project because of the timeline, obviously they could only go so far, as far as researching into construction methodologies, researching into costs, means, methods, what materials were even accessible to, what where the project was at, Wherever each team went with understanding the project to a certain level of depth, our goal was to just give them a means to communicate that out to the judges. So the goal wasn't that they magically had to know how to perfectly estimate without ever having done this type of work before. We weren't expecting perfect cost estimates out of the competition, we were just trying to give them a vehicle for communication.

Erin Looney  48:04

My conversations with the students were truly some of the highlights of my time in Dallas. I also spoke to the team advisors, Dean papachon from University of Arizona, Stephen matley from new school and Matt Morris from Colorado Boulder. Stay tuned for more from these interviews with the students advisors and Amanda from HCSS in an upcoming 2025 episode where we'll learn even more about the DBIA National Design Build student competition. Oh, okay, that's a wrap on part one of this special two part episode of the design build delivers podcast. We learned about some of the award winning projects and the bright student minds shaping design build and making DBIA so proud. We have to do it again next year. Be sure to tune in Monday, December 2, for part two of our recap, where we'll hear from Brunelleschi, Lifetime Achievement Award winner Don Warren and Distinguished Leadership Award winners Emily gallyers and Rod Pope. Thanks to everyone you heard in these interviews, as well as the people behind the scenes who brought this extra special episode to life, like Fred Yi and Kara Brown, who ran the wires and managed the machines. Thanks to you for listening and for helping us make the 2024 Design Build Conference and Expo a massive success, so much so it needs more than one episode. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss part two of this episode or so you don't miss any other exciting episodes of the design build delivers podcast like our annual recap coming up in December. It's a look ahead to 2025 with Executive Director and CEO of DBIA, Lisa Washington, and incoming DBIA board chair, Tom Foley. And a big thank you to our sponsor, us. CAD for supporting the design build delivers podcast. Learn more at us. Cad.com/db