Design-Build Delivers

Design-Build at 14,000 Feet: How a “Small” Federal Project Redefined Possibility on Pikes Peak

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What does it take to deliver a mission-critical federal facility atop one of the most extreme environments in the U.S.? In this episode, we head to Colorado’s Pikes Peak to explore the award-winning High Altitude Research Lab, a 4,000-square-foot facility rebuilt under intense weather, logistical and design constraints. Joe Opyd shares how his team used design-build to meet the moment and what this “small” project reveals about trust, flexibility and collaboration.

Guest:
Joe Opyd, CCM, DBIA, Sr. Project Manager / Project Controls Manager, DPR Construction
Member, DBIA Federal Committee

Topics Covered:

  • Using design-build for small but complex federal projects
  • Delivering in extreme environments (wind, lightning, altitude)
  • Stakeholder collaboration and city-federal partnerships
  • Long funding timelines and design constraints
  • Safety planning and logistics at 14,000 feet
  • How DBIA principles supported project success

Related Links:

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.

 

opydedit 48000 1

Fri, Jul 25, 2025 11:33AM • 39:08

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

High altitude research lab, Pikes Peak, design build, US Army, logistics, safety, extreme conditions, federal facility, small projects, construction challenges, altitude sickness, wind conditions, project timeline, collaboration, innovation.

SPEAKERS

Joe Opyd, Speaker 1, Erin Looney

 

Erin Looney  00:00

When you hear small project, you probably don't think of a federal facility buried into the granite face of a 14,000 foot mountain where hurricane force winds, panic attacks, limited access and federal red tape collide. But the high altitude research lab on Colorado's Pikes Peak proves in design, build small doesn't mean simple. This 4000 square foot lab earned DBIA is 2022 best in small projects, award for very good reason, designed to support high altitude medical research for the US Army. The project was a model of logistics, trust and adaptability. Welcome to the design build delivers podcast brought to you by us CAD and our cons company. Learn more at us. Cad.com/dbia I am Aaron Looney from the DBIA national headquarters in DC. And in this episode, we do a little extreme sports, a little bit of mountain climbing. Actually, we stay seated, as we probably should with DPR constructions, Joe open to hear how his team overcame extreme conditions, competing stakeholders and tight constraints to deliver a facility built for the next 100 years at the top of the world. Design build projects, they run the gamut in terms of cost, and if you look in our project database, you can see that range, and it is staggering. I mean, it's from very, very relatively small numbers up to the billions, and just like anything else, the attention tends to fall on those larger dollar projects. But the beauty of design build is it's often a stellar choice for a smaller, tailored, specialized project like the one we're talking about today, this high altitude research lab. It's set atop Pike's Peak in Colorado, way out in the middle of nowhere, and it earned both a national award of merit and DBIA is best in small projects honor in 2022 so those are clear signs that it hit the mark. So let's look at the lab a bit more, and then we can broaden our chat to some more general insights on using design build on small projects. Why was design build the right delivery method for a project like this lab, a lot

 

Joe Opyd  02:03

of this and what made the success of the high altitude research lab was allowing the contractor the flexibility to design the building, not just for the environment and the user, but a Couple things that are really not ever thought about in the design build world. And construction is purely about logistics and safety. And those were two huge, monumental pieces of this project, just with the conditions of working at 14,000 feet on top of a mountain, all the challenges with with travel to weather and you name it, we needed the flexibility to be able to design the building around what we could actually do and perform, and all those things combined really made it the right choice. And really trying to design a building and a facility that was a super nice facility in the end, way far exceeded what, frankly, the end users expectations were, and gave them a facility that they're going to use for probably the next 100 and some years.

 

Erin Looney  03:17

So after we're all gone, it'll still be there? Yeah, so you said you weren't going to take the project if safety wasn't a priority and that flexibility was key. So was design build then always part of the plan from the start? Or did those things, the flexibility and the safety concerns, lead to choosing design build for the delivery? It was

 

Joe Opyd  03:37

not the RFP process for the government was a very, very lengthy process, way far more especially trying to get funding upon funding requests than a normal, regular federal funded project. They had first put out solicitations probably six years prior to what the true solicitation that we were awarded upon, and they put out a solicitation just for interested offers and try to gain some interest from the entire community and contractor base, and they just were not getting anything. I can remember at one of the Industry Day events that the Society of American military engineers put on. That was one of the sessions that they had. Was they literally asked, How can we make this successful? How can we get this thing to actually have legs, and get somebody to build it? Of course, the first reactions that came back was the government budget were so low. Because, again, you know, just like you've stated, it's only a 4000 square foot building, and so the government has to price within the average square footage, etc, and taking into conditions in that doesn't really apply. It's very hard for the government to justify it, because, in the end, Pike's Peak is with. Within 30 miles of Colorado Springs, so it's within the range of what normal construction takes place. The initial government request and everything for funding doesn't take into account of altitude gain and things like that, and it's very hard for the government to justify those differences, so they had to go back to Congress in that several times to keep on asking for increases. Overall, that whole process was well over six years that it took them. A lot of the Corps of Engineer folks would say that it was actually 13 years it took them to start that conversation to where they actually got a budget and an RFP that could be awarded.

 

Erin Looney  05:45

Wow, that's, yeah, that actually, that's me trying to process this timeline anyway, 13 years, kind of an unusual timeline, right?

 

Joe Opyd  05:56

Yep, much different process. And thankfully, on what was really the eustarium side and hfpa Health Facilities Planning Association. Those guys that were inevitably involved with the project were the ones that were on it and trying to get it to go forward for 13 years. So they knew the entire history of this thing, and very married to it. And very much like you know, seeing what the mission and everything that they actually did, and the research that they performed up at altitude and and the effects that it actually had on the battlefield and everything was tremendous. So they kept on pushing it, pushing it, and finally got us to the right solution. Frankly, it was in a big partnership with actually the city, which is very different as well, right? You don't see a federal contract that has to partner with the city. And that came about because the city, the city of Colorado Springs, is basically who manages and runs the entire peak of the mountain, because it's such a tourist thing. So they've got their partnerships that they actually run that peak. They have the land deal and everything for it. And very complicated like ownership, land ownership deal, because there was a lot of partnerships and everything in the whole thing. So it was something that the federal government needed to come to the table and say, you know, what else can you guys do as well? Because nobody was going to let the federal government just build an ugly building up on the peak. So they partnered with the city, because the city wanted to actually redo the entire Pikes Peak Visitor Center, and I figured out the timing to that to then really tag on to the research lab and get that to fruition and make everything happen at one time. So we truly had two contracts at one time. We have one with the city of Colorado Springs, where we were rebuilding the entire peak and the visitor center, and then we also had the contract with the federal government to rebuild the research lab. That was the only way that we could even try to design the thing around logistics, with everything else that we were doing up there, and try to come within a reasonable budget to the government that they could actually make the thing happen.

 

Erin Looney  08:21

We've been discussing this a little bit here and there, and throughout this short conversation, design build, as I said before, is often associated with larger projects, and what you just described to me would would count as a complex project, if not a large one. But based on what you were just saying, this is incredibly complex, and that 13 year lead up, it sounds like that necessitated a quicker delivery method. Maybe is that where design build came in,

 

Joe Opyd  08:49

trying to call it a quicker delivery method, because it was not for for such a small building, a small project. It was not a very fast project through construction timeframe. True construction timeframe occurred about three years. So what design build allowed us to do was, number one, pick our design methods and everything about the facility that we know we could deliver and get up the mountain. For instance, behind that, as we designed the true structure of the building out of precast concrete that had super insulated interior wall so that we can meet the insulation requirements that was in the extreme conditions. But in doing that, we had to design the panels to a very specific load limit. They were only allowed to be eight foot wide panels. The maximum weight on each panel of 28,000 pounds, which is fairly light considering a large panel will sometimes be around 60,000 pounds. All of that was designed around the logistics of what our precaster could add. Actually get up the mountain? Well, you think into the all the layers that we really had to work through of, you know, okay, so now it's not just the semi and the size of the load, it was, what is the biggest crane that can pick this that we can actually get up to the top of the mountain? I mean, we went through a year and a half of logistics planning just to figure out how to build up there, it just would not have happened on a traditional you know, if you call it a bid build type relationship

 

Erin Looney  10:30

small projects at DBIA, when we talk about them, we're talking primarily about the price tag. So to be eligible for best in small projects award from DBIA, the sticker price needs to be under 10 million. And the high altitude Research Lab clocked in at 7.8 5 million. But if we look at physical size, also, when I hear 4000 square feet, I don't think of a small physical space. And based on what you were just telling me about, all the other elements that are at work there, particularly the getting up there and getting back, and the travel, the size of the lab becomes irrelevant, because it could have been any size, and those complications would still be there. That leads to, you know, let's talk a little more about location and talk more about how this lab supports this highly specialized research, namely, US Army Medical Research and Studies to prepare soldiers for battle, what were some of the unique technical and programmatic challenges you had to address in relation to its function, its purpose?

 

Joe Opyd  11:32

Great way to actually ask that question, because so one of the constraints and the issues with everything, all the facilities that are up on Pikes Peak, is they're almost completely self contained, except for electricity. So electricity is the only thing that is actually cabled and brought up the mountain. All the other utilities, water, wastewater, etc, is trucked up there. So it is trucked up to the peak. The fresh water is put in storage tanks, and then the wastewater is trucked down. So on the research lab, because we were limited on square footage, that was what they were approved by Congress. Basically, on the programming side was for the 4000 feet, and then looking at everything that they were asking for, it included everything from a dormitory that could hold in house up to, I believe it was 12 people. 12 people is what stands in my memory, full restroom facilities, showers, etc, Ada capabilities. They wanted the full kitchen and day room options, along with the true lab space. And it is a full lab medical facility. So you start packing all that stuff in to 4000 square feet, and you you quickly run out of space. So, you know, design build allowed us some flexibility to start moving that stuff around. So we took all the mechanical equipment and we basically built a crawl space, a basement. We weren't allowed to call it a basement because they didn't have the approved square footage to call it a basement like these are the funny you know, federal rules that you have to learn, especially when you do design build in the federal world. You know you can't just build a 6000 square foot facility, even though it might be in the budget, and that's what you could do with the money. They're not allowed. So you got to fit those limitations in where we could. We shoved all the mechanical equipment, storage tanks, water tanks, all of that, into the crawl space, and we built it that way, even though, for us, the builder, it was going to require us to do a little bit more excavation. It made sense. Excavation that in the regular world might not seem like a big deal. 14,000 feet when you're having to dig and blast through rock was a big deal. It was one of the few projects I've ever actually had to do a blasting plan on. And that was a pretty intense with Corps of Engineers and just speaking about the benefits and advantages of the design build on these complicated, small projects, design build allowed us to on the seasonal challenges with Pikes Peak allowed us to push forward a civil plan, basically excavation and grading to start getting the blasting and everything done the very first summer period that we could and start letting us get that advantage and take care of that. And then when we hit that next winter phase, that's when we push forward and completed the design and everything,

 

Erin Looney  14:39

not building a basement, but a crawl space right, to make sure, clear on that

 

Joe Opyd  14:44

right actually had a pretty large excavation with it, because one of the asks from the city, and more so, one of the things that they dictated was they don't even want anybody from the public to. Really know that it exists and it's up

 

Erin Looney  15:02

there. I'm so glad you brought that up, because as you were talking about the visitor center and all the other facilities and the fact that this is a tourist area, I thought, Do they just have it out there where everyone can see it? It doesn't seem, it seems a bit like a security risk. So I'm glad you brought that up 100%

 

Joe Opyd  15:20

that's what it used to be, and that's what it was forever from when they even first started and they started research up there, prior to even the Vietnam War. I believe it was like right after the Korean War, because we were in different engagements that we were actually fighting at altitude, and there were the right scientists with the military that said, we need to start studying these things and blah, blah, blah. So that's really what started the high altitude Research Lab mission, and they identified Pikes Peak way back then it's the most accessible 14 or with routes going up there different modes of transportation between the cog railway and the Pikes Peak highway, and the capability actually getting up to the peak to 14,000 feet. So that made it the prime location. It was just a pre engineered building that sat off to the side of the peak, and it was kind of on the opposite side of the peak. Then the old Visitor Center sat but nobody really knew what it was, other than it's got a US Army sign on it. Okay?

 

Erin Looney  16:23

So to most visitors, it looked like nothing, just a metal building with an army logo. And as we all know, nothing says, Don't ask questions like a nondescript federal structure on a mountaintop.

 

Joe Opyd  16:32

Yeah, right. Questions would come up here and there, but the city just thought it was ugly. You know, it was the thorn or the tick that sat up there. The city asked federal government if they can figure out a design to make the Harle disappear and where most people will not notice that it's up there. And so with that, they agreed. The federal government saw what the potential design was for the new visitor center, which was tucking the visitor center into the mountain, so it kind of sits off to one side. It's excavated down, and it's tucked down into the mountain so that you really don't see this mass building that is sitting up on dikes peak. And the federal government said, Yes, we should be able to we'll leave it on the contractor. So that's what we were able to do, and we excavated down the same method. They are two separate buildings, but they're literally separated by two inches.

 

Erin Looney  17:31

So should that count as two separate buildings?

 

Joe Opyd  17:33

Yeah, absolutely every everybody signed off on it. They don't even share a roof. They don't share anything. There's a cover that comes over each parapet of the precast walls, and that's how you really don't see that. It's two separate buildings, but it is 100% two completely separate buildings. There was an even initial concept, because they couldn't figure out how to get into the potential crawl space. There was a concept that put a door that went from the research lab down into the basement of the visitor center, and the city freaked out about that and did not want that access there, so they they said it just has to be two separate buildings, so two separate electrical utility feeds the whole nine yards. This

 

Erin Looney  18:27

is actually a really good lead in to the next question, because you've been talking about several challenges, and we've gone over what those challenges looked like. What we haven't really talked about yet is from the the React and plan side of it, how did the team respond to some of these challenges that you're talking about, or anything that we haven't looked at? That was an unexpected development,

 

Joe Opyd  18:51

couple of big unexpected developments that that really nobody anticipated. Everybody knew the extreme wind conditions for up on Pikes Peak, except it was bracketed between 110 to 140 mile an hour winds. So that's what everything got designed to the worst wind storms up there actually occur in the winter.

 

Erin Looney  19:16

I was stunned by that, because those are hurricane force winds. I'm from Florida, and when I hear those numbers, I panic and start buying water

 

Joe Opyd  19:23

absolutely so we knew we had to at least design to that, and so that's what we push forward with. Well, the first winter that we went into, it was always planned that we would not work up there at all that first winter, that was what the initial RFPs for both projects lined out. Is just a plan that sometime around October, you would shut down and you would pick back up again around May timeframe. So it shortened the true construction period quite. It a bit, and that's a long time, yep. So what we truly did was, the first winter, we left equipment and everything up there to measure the wind speeds and to get the true, accurate weather conditions, because there wasn't any, there was only, like historical records and stuff that was not accurate to Pikes Peak, we've put everything up there, left it in place. Well, that first winter our anomater. It was a full, like commercial grade, wind speed full anomater measuring device that could pick all this up. It was mounted on with like these huge steel brackets onto the side of the old visitor center and a storm blew so hard it maxed the no matter out at like 200 mile an hour winds, and it ripped it off the building. Oh, no. So that reset our mind frame that truly the design needs to be 200 so we went through a lot of those changes. And really, everything got designed for those hurricane force type winds, the fresh air systems, mechanical movers, all that has hurricane stuff on it. Every exterior piece of steel is a quarter inch thick, plated corn steel. It was, it was pretty intense. And so we went through a couple changes like that, but it was pretty interesting just trying to figure out those things and what the weather was doing. Another one was lightning. So lightning ended up being actually the number one event that shut us down the most. And you just really want to consider how much the mountain gets struck, but it was daily, so we had to actually shorten our distances and our safety distances from when we were we had the special devices that could detect lightning within the area, within the region, and you can change the distances that were. The alarm sets off between five miles to 1520, et cetera. We changed the distances to push out further because the storms would blow so fast over the peak that it didn't allow our crews enough time to get indoors or to get refuge in into a safe condition.

 

Erin Looney  22:17

I commend any of you who had to go up there because I would have said, You know what I can else to do?

 

Joe Opyd  22:24

Yeah, it was, it was, it was a lot of different challenges that you just don't expect on normal projects. Right away from the very beginning, we implemented the rule that everyone going up there to work had to undergo a full physical fitness test. So we had medical providers in Colorado Springs that would administer the test, and then they would sign off if they were capable of actually going up to the peak or not. So they had to have that sign off to actually go up there and work. And that included everybody from the subcontractors on down from there, we actually experienced like some odd results. You know, 80% of those people were good, but there was another 20% that they would go up to work at 14,000 feet, and they would be the fittest people that you would look at, and they would get altitude sickness and be down, just like that. The first year, we tried a scenario where we would take them down halfway down the mountain and let them recover, which was normally very fast. Like when you get altitude sickness, you recover very fast. As soon as you get down, typically below 10,000 9000 feet, those people would want to go back up. And they'd be like, I'm good, I can go back up to work. I'm fine, but we would take them back up, and within two hours, they would be down again. So after trying to do that the first year, we just set a rule that was Nope. It's a one and done scenario. It's too much of a safety risk. If you go down with altitude sickness, you're done. You're not coming back

 

Erin Looney  24:01

up. That makes sense to me. I don't think you would want to risk that kind of recurrence and and I don't actually again, being from the flattest part of the country, pretty much. I don't know what altitude sickness looks like, but it seems to me, if you

 

Joe Opyd  24:19

panic attack. Okay, most people think they're having a heart attack. It's a panic attack, and it strickens the chest and everything. Some people get nauseous and start throwing up, but generally speaking, it's around the same symptoms. So then as soon as you take them down, where they can start getting that oxygen again, and they can really start getting the circulation then then they come back pretty quick,

 

Erin Looney  24:43

and I suppose, a quick recovery for someone who's fit and not used to that happening, of course they're going to say, No, I'm good. I can go back up there. Yeah, you think it's not going to happen again because you managed to get through it. 

 

Erin Looney  24:55

So we've really been talking already about a lot of the issues directly related to. To the high altitude aspect of the lab. And I want to point out that it is the Army Corps of Engineers, highest project and most remote project in the world. So you've actually gotten into this stuff already, looking at scheduling, the weather, how it impacted that workforce, access materials, how to get power, how to get everything you need up there. And this is a it's a stunning project. It's very cool. It's very efficient and very beautiful. There will be photos that are on the DBIA website in the 2022, list of project team award winners. And then I'm going to go ahead and post them so they can kind of see what you're talking about. For now, let's look a little more broadly at design build in the small project space, your experience is substantial. You've seen big projects, you've seen small projects. What are some common misconceptions you hear about using design build on a smaller project, that it's easy?

 

Joe Opyd  25:55

I would challenge anything to that, because even a small, little, couple $100,000 project pushed out as design build when it's not researched and it's not understood both by the government side and then also by the contractor, it can really turn into a complex issue, and when that coordination, All the coordination efforts have taken place when they have not taken place, just makes a whole bunch of challenges between everybody. And I have seen those relationships just go so far south because the coordination and everything wasn't done, or communication breakdown happens between the end user and what's actually going on just turns what should be a simple, small project into an absolute terror. And that, that, to me, has always been a huge misconception, but you get the right people that have the right background. Honestly, I'm a very big preacher of design, build, and the DBIA Association everything to do with it, and the right education, the certification behind that, they understand, the principles behind it, the contractual relationships, things go so much better. And there's a huge piece, and DBIA really preaches it and talks about it, teaches it of partnering and partnering in the government world is hard. It is not an easy practice, because there's not a whole lot of government contracting folks that are truly educated on the DBIA principles and design

 

Speaker 1  27:39

build. We should do something about that. Yeah, so I, I'm trying.

 

Joe Opyd  27:44

I've been a part of DBIA, Federal National Committee for several years now, and there's the right folks on that committee that are trying to do something about that. A big one, especially, what the focus of this project and everything was in that community is the federal conference that is every August, because that is really, that opportunity to really understand get together as an overall DBIA community, design, build community and talk about that near and dear to my heart, because I've seen when it goes well and it can go well, and I've seen when it has gone horrible, and I've been the fix it, project manager on those projects, and I've come in to recover them. And once you've done that a couple times, like you get on board pretty quick to what you can do to really improve the process.

 

Erin Looney  28:35

It is you all who are out there doing this stuff, creating, building and, you know, transforming communities, you're the ones who decide together what works, what doesn't, to piggyback off your mention of our federal design build Industry Days. It's August 20 and 21st and it's in the DC area in Reston. I will post a link to that so anybody who wants to join us, which I highly recommend based on what you just said in because I'm going to recommend it anyway. Check out the details there. The registration for public and private owners is free, and we have a discounted rate for UBS. So it's a great opportunity to address some of the things you've just been talking about, and maybe keep you from having to go in and be a fix it guy all the time.

 

Joe Opyd  29:23

Yeah, definitely. That's a great plug. I really do want to just mention for a quick minute of just purely that fact of successful design build projects, even the small, what seems like a simple project really takes the government side, which predominantly, a lot of it is the Corps of Engineers, nafac facility folks, whatever the entity is, GSA and FBI have really made a huge, tremendous push forward in the design build world. But it takes those folks being educated on DBIA design build and the principles. To really make it a success. And the Harle, the higher altitude Research Lab, had that. We had those people. Doug Foster was my main project manager with the Corps of Engineers. And he understood the process. He understood design, build was really big proponent of it. And frankly, if it wasn't without Doug and some other folks like John Bristow, who is the cerium rep, it would not have gone as successfully as it did

 

Erin Looney  30:31

all of those people. You need to tell them they're mentioned in the podcast episode I share with their friends.

 

Joe Opyd  30:36

Yeah, we stay in touch quite a bit. Make sure we track each other and what's going on. Those are good relationships to keep

 

Erin Looney  30:43

absolutely so let's travel back up the mountain a little bit here and go right back into the lab. It is up and running, as you've already described, there's a dorm, there's the kitchen, there's the day room. It's focusing on studying the impact of that dizzying altitude on human performance and health, so that when, as you mentioned following the Korean War, when you go into spaces that are higher than what you're used to, and you need to be at the top of your game because you are in the middle of warfare, it's really important to understand this. So now that it's operational, though, what kind of feedback have you heard from the owner or the end users? Really

 

Joe Opyd  31:20

good feedback, other than some of the weather conditions have even gone beyond and exceeded what we designed to but just a great facility, it really has gotten good feedback from the original doctors and everybody that has worked up there for so long that it's a world class facility. Now they have everything. They have the capability and the nice, the best of equipment to study and do what they want up there,

 

Erin Looney  31:48

and you can't do anything about the weather, no matter how much they complain. Not even design build can do that. So let's say now that you're advising a team on a project, and it's got a similar price tag. It's got high stakes. It doesn't have to be similar to this, but it has the same urgency and the same specialized conditions. And they ask you, what do I need to know? What are those lessons that you would give them before they go into their undertaking for a similar 10 million or under, highly specialized project.

 

Joe Opyd  32:21

Don't underestimate the small things. Make sure that they got the right folks in the room to really talk through the project and what their plan is, taking into account logistics and everything for something like this or the complicated features. But also make sure they talk to all entities that's involved with it, end user who's contracting to its core engineers, or whoever it might be those contracting folks, and make sure you're all aligned on what the thought process is, how you're going to build the complete plan to everything, what the timeline is, setting the right expectation to the end user is just critical to the overall success and really lining that out so that they understand the entire process, because a lot of end users don't understand construction and they don't know what to expect, that develops the overall success plan, and it really just sets the stage for the partnering, even the small project, even the quick hitter that's supposed to be a short, 60 day roof job, if the end user doesn't know what's going to happen and actually occur, it just turns ugly.

 

Erin Looney  33:33

A few of the other small projects we have awarded or have had featured have been transportation projects. There's the fern hollow bridge when it collapsed, that was a classified as a small project, and it was designed built. That was a really important thing. That's pretty easy to see if you live in the area. Well, I need to get from point A to point B. Now tell me how I'm going to do that while you're working on my thoroughfare to that place, right? It seems more obvious with something like that, but what you're saying that is very important. You're talking to people who are doing incredibly important work, not that going across the bridges, and it's probably just as important. But this is niche kind of work that having those people understand what you're doing and why that does seem like something you wouldn't want to overlook. The average person who's not in the field doesn't know how construction works, and when you're in your own field, your own industry, you get a little bit caught up in thinking you know what's going on. So everybody else does. And I think that communication is really, really important no matter what is happening. So that's a really wonderful piece of advice, and I'm always going to advocate for good communication. It's what I

 

Joe Opyd  34:43

do. Yeah, my my biggest saying, like, no matter who I'm teaching, I love to teach the younger project engineers or new college grads and all of that coming out of school, you know, just purely base your life on the fact of You Can Never. Over communicate, but you can always under communicate

 

Erin Looney  35:04

Absolutely. That is so true. We're going to look forward now, kind of look at the future of design build, whether we're talking five years, 10 years, or that 150 year mark when you're going to have to rebuild this lab again. When I say you we're not going to be here when they have to do that, unless they figure out something up there that keeps us alive that long, we won't be around for it. But somebody will. So what excites you most about where design build is heading, particularly with the small project space, where you know you have innovation, you have impact, and they're tied together so tightly, I think what's

 

Joe Opyd  35:41

interesting and what excites me, especially being on an interesting project that I'm on right now, which is an AI data center. You see what can happen when you're challenged to come up with methods of well, what can you do if it's just about going fast, or whatever it might be, right? Aaron, whatever that bar that needs to be set of, no matter what it needs to be the most secure facility, or no matter what it needs to be the most technology driven facility, etc. Well, we have that all in one bucket here. It just It blows you away, and you really see what can be done. That's the design build world. When you challenge the industry to come up with a better method or to advance construction, we're going to there's a lot of you know, whatever drives that between short labor force or budgets, or technology, all of that drives progress. And you have a reason to do something different. We have a reason to push forward and pour concrete faster with a better finish. Guess what robots can do that these days, design build and pushing things and the design build world allows that because it allows us enough flexibility to change a couple methods here and there, but still deliver the right quality, the good quality and the expectation to the owner.

 

Erin Looney  37:16

It's really fascinating to hear you talk about two things in there, one of them being that you're working on a data center, which is just qualitatively so different from this project we've been talking about, but that's such a massive area to adapt to, because data centers in whatever capacity, whatever they might look like today, whatever they might look like down the road, they're not going anywhere, because we are So much more technology driven, and it's almost the snake eating its tail that the technology is going to drive the need for innovation in the industry, and the innovation in the industry is going to drive the need for more technologies. Exactly. Yes, how you guys keep up? I'll never know.

 

Joe Opyd  37:55

5000 people on this site right now, that's how we keep

 

Erin Looney  37:58

up. Okay, we'll have to talk about that one next time.

 

Joe Opyd  38:03

Yeah, the big swing from talking about a small, complicated project to Guatemala right now, but it's all fun. That's why we love construction,

 

Erin Looney  38:11

altitude sickness, 200 mile per hour winds, a 13 year road to yes, this clearly wasn't a typical project, and it wasn't a typical design build delivery from its hidden in plain sight location to the layers of collaboration and creativity required the high altitude Research Lab proves even the smallest projects can demand the very best of design build to explore more about what it took to deliver at 14,000 feet. Check out the show notes in your podcast app. Visit the design build delivers blog, or check out DBIA is project database. You'll also find details on our upcoming federal design build symposium, August, 20 and 21st in Reston, Virginia, with free registration for owners and discounts for UBS. Thanks for climbing Pikes Peak with us and listening to the design build delivers podcast brought to you by us, CAD and our cons company. Learn more us, cad.com/dbia,

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Erin Looney

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Fred Yi

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Joe Opyd, CCM, DBIA

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