Two major examples are phase II of San Francisco's Presidio Parkway and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) Oakland Airport connector projects.

The Presidio Parkway project involves reconstructing and realigning road and tunnel connectors to the Golden Gate Bridge. Flatiron leads the Golden Link Partners team to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the project for 30 years. Flatiron has partnered with public agencies before, notably in Canada, but the Presidio Parkway project is the company's first public-private partnership project in California.

Launched in June, the $361-million BART Oakland Airport connector will, when finished, move passengers from the existing Coliseum BART station to Oakland Airport via an aerial guideway. Flatiron project manager Tony Inocencio says the connector represents “really the first major Flatiron project in Northern California.”

Inocencio adds, “We have a lot of mass transit experience down south, and have previously done work in Utah …. The connector project balances out what we're doing throughout the entire state.”

Educational Outreach

Along with his work on the connector project, Inocencio is also active in Flatiron's educational outreach efforts, particularly its Build-A-Bridge program.

The program allows students interested in engineering to visit Flatiron offices, receive training and compete for scholarships and internships. Flatiron's good corporate citizenship activity was another reason for its selection as ENR California's Contractor of the Year.

“The program not only gives students an opportunity for a scholarship, but also to work as an intern,” Inocencio says. “That gives them the full exposure in seeing what engineering and construction is all about.”

The Build-A-Bridge scholarships, usually $3,500, are typically awarded to the top student applicant. This year, however, all six Build-A-Bridge students from Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy in Oakland received scholarships; the first-place participant received a $3,500 award and the other five received $500 scholarships.

“We wanted to make sure they were all rewarded for being part of the program,” Inocencio says.