2009 General Contractor of the Year

Sundt Construction Leads Path to Construction Industry’s Future

By Scott Blair

Sundt earns the award based on its innovation, commitment to sustainability, industry leadership and community involvement.

Sundt Construction’s 67,400-sq-ft, three-story headquarters in Tempe was designed by SmithGroup to help the general contractor demonstrate its commitment to sustainability to prospective clients with features such as reduced water consumption, low-VOC materials and an on-site green education program. (Photos courtesy Sundt Construction Inc.)

“Dare to Challenge, Dare to Change” was the theme chosen by J. Doug Pruitt during his inauguration as incoming AGC president earlier this year.

That also could be the battle cry for Sundt Construction Inc., the Tempe-based general contracting firm Pruitt leads as chairman and CEO.

The 119-year old firm has continually adapted and diversified in response to the hurdles it faces, including the current recession.

“If we were Sundt Retail, life wouldn’t be pretty right now,” Pruitt says. “If we were Sundt Housing, life would be ugly. But we are into heavy highway, bridges, light rail, industrial, water treatment, mining, power, buildings of various types, utilities. It’s the diversity of market segments that we serve that is keeping our backlog up.”

Sundt’s heavy/highway work includes two of the Arizona Dept. of Transporation’s largest projects: the $200-million Interstate-10 widening in Tucson which started in 2007 and wraps up this year and the $188-million Loop 202/Red Mountain Freeway widening between S.R. 51 and Loop 101 currently underway. Sundt joint ventured with the Phoenix office of Kiewit Construction on both.

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“Since Sundt has been a key partner on some large projects, our relationship has depended upon reliability teamwork and open communication,” says Floyd Roehrich, ADOT’s state engineer. “The I-10 widening in Tucson is a great example. The project team has minimized impacts on the community while delivering results ahead of schedule.”

Sundt also did extensive work on Phoenix Light Rail, which began service last year. The 4.9-mi Line Section 5, done with joint venture partner Stacy & Witbeck of Alameda, Calif., won the transportation category in McGraw-Hill Construction’s Best of the Best 2008 Awards, partly due to its ability to work with the public in a respectful manner.

Building Numbers

Sundt performed $1.15 billion of work nationwide in 2008, enough to move it from 62nd to 55th worldwide among Engineering News-Record’s Top 400 Contractors.

In Southwest Contractor’s April list of the Top 140 Contractors of the Southwest, Sundt topped Arizona’s list at $813.2 million.

Even with most contractors being hit hardest by the downturn this year, Pruitt says the firm should end 2009 in the range of $950 million-$1.05 billion nationwide.

Still, Pruitt sees room for improvement. “We are an industry that has done a very poor job at improving productivity,” he says. “If you are going to try to be up there with the best of the best, you have got to be innovative, adapting to change and constantly striving to get better.”

To that end, Sundt has been at the forefront of several industry innovations, including sustainability, building information modeling and Last Planner System, a process that involves subcontractors at the foreman level to collaborate on detailed project schedules to maximize productivity and create a more stable project environment.

“We have had the pleasure of working with Sundt for the last five years, collaborating on SkySong, the Arizona State University Innovation Center,” says Sharon Harper, president and CEO of Phoenix-based developer The Plaza Cos. “Sundt’s commitment to sustainability, the methods they use to price construction and implement quality, and their responsiveness and problem-solving efforts make for a terrific partnership and, ultimately, great buildings.”

Money Where Their Mouth Is

Like many of Sundt’s projects, the first two buildings of the 37-acre high-tech office/mixed-use SkySong project in Scottsdale are being submitted for LEED certification. Sundt was recently awarded its first LEED platinum certification for the Arizona Game & Fish headquarters in Phoenix. The three-building campus features onsite solar-energy production, high-efficiency mechanical systems and numerous sustainable construction materials.

Sundt recently began the reconstruction of Loop 202 along an 8-mi stretch between Loop 101 and S.R. 51. The $188 million design-build joint venture with Kiewit will widen roadways and bridges, reconstruct ramps, modify retaining and noise walls and improve drainage systems.

But perhaps the most significant milestone is the LEED gold certification Sundt recently received for its own headquarters, which it occupied in November 2007. “We have more than 150 LEED-accredited professionals here and we work with our customers to help them in their desire to have sustainable facilities,” Pruitt says. “So we have a social responsibility to be doing this ourselves.”

Sundt is in the design phase for a new 45,000-sq-ft Tucson facility, expected to be LEED silver or better, he adds.

Model Buildings

One of the components leading to the sustainability of Sundt’s headquarters was the use of building information modeling, providing the project team the ability to utilize pre-fabrication, fast-track scheduling and collaborative design to reduce resource consumption.

Pruitt credits the firm’s active involvement in the AGC with introducing Sundt to BIM by sharing best practices at AGC educational seminars and conventions.

“We didn’t get involved with BIM because a salesperson came through the front door; we got involved because we were out seeing what was going on,” he says.

BIM was used extensively on the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, completed last year as part of ASU’s downtown Phoenix campus. But it was Sundt’s commitment to collaboration and integrated project delivery that most helped the project team to complete programming, design and construction for the 225,000-sq-ft academic building in just over 19 months saysElaine Solomon, vice president of Western region science and technology with the Phoenix office of HDR CUH2A, the project’s architect of record.

The high degree of collaboration included Sundt’s team moving into HDR’s offices for the first six months of the project, along with key engineers and design-assist subcontractors. The partnership netted the team Southwest Contractor’s Best of 2008 award in project management and was a finalist in the national Best of the Best Awards.

Sundt has worked on several Phoenix Light Rail projects, including Line Section 5 through busy downtown Tempe and Arizona State University. It won Best Transportation Project in McGraw-Hill Construction’s Best of the Best 2008 Awards.

“One facet of Sundt that has greatly impressed me was the proactive review of the team’s performance,” Solomon says. “The entire team took the time to have a formal review of lessons learned from Cronkite and applied them to our next team collaboration for ASU’s Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV project.”

Because of the Arizona state budget crisis, much of Sundt’s university work, including the $134-million ISTB IV, was put on hold. In response, Pruitt says his firm is now “moving resources to the divisions where the workflows are still fairly good and pursuing work in those areas – heavy/civil, industrial and federal.”

One of those areas is Sundt’s Texas division, which is starting more than $360 million of projects at Fort Bliss Army Post in El Paso. Sundt crews are currently building the $30-million Warriors in Transition Complex, the first project for the U.S. Army that is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The three-story, 140,000-sq-ft building will house up to 232 wounded soldiers returning from combat as they recover and re-integrate into the Army.

Sundt also broke ground on more than 1 million sq ft of barracks space spread over 24 buildings and has several other projects in the works, including tactical equipment maintenance facilities and a community center.

A Solid Foundation

Since it was formed in 1999, the Sundt Foundation has raised more than $3 million, including $479,692 in 2008 alone. The charitable giving program is funded through employee payroll deductions, while all administrative expenses are covered by the company. “We decided a separate 501(c)(3) organization would be the best approach and that the control would pass to employees rather than management,” says Charlie Boyd, executive director of the foundation.

Non-profit organizations can fill out a simple one-page application for grants, which are generally limited to benefiting disadvantaged children and adults. The grants are reviewed and recommended by a committee of employees who live in the area and are then approved by a board of directors. Boyd says the process gives employees a sense of connection to the community.

The Arizona Game & Fish building in Phoenix became one of a handful of projects in the state to earn LEED platinum certification. Designed by Will-Hayes Architects and built by Sundt, the project features a high-efficiency air-cooled chiller, high-performance glazing and on-site solar production.

Most grants are between $1,000 and $5,000, which allows the foundation to aid an extensive array of charities. In Phoenix alone, over 50 groups – from Autism Speaks to St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance – received grants in 2008, totaling over $242,000.

We have a responsibility not only as companies but as employees to give back to the communities in which we live and work,” Pruitt says. “What’s my legacy? If I thought about it, it’d be starting the Sundt Foundation.”

Useful Sources

Read more about Sundt, visit their website at www.sundt.com.
For more information on Sundt Foundation, visit www.sundt.com/sundt-foundation.