The building steps up the hillside, its two wings connected by bridges over a three-story "canyon" that serves as a central gathering place. Floor-to-ceiling windows span the west-facing end of the canyon, providing visitors expansive views west to the Salt Lake Valley and the Great Salt Lake and Oquirrh Mountains.

"Ecstatic is not too strong a word for how we feel about this building," says Sarah George, the museum's director. "It is beautiful but also functions well. They [Big-D] became significant contributors to what we were doing. They helped us look for solutions to things early on."

Big-D made extensive use of building information modeling on the project and led regular monthly team meetings among exhibit designers, carpenters and other specialty trades to keep things on schedule and on budget.

Big-D's largest ongoing project, the Utah Data Center, is being built for the federal government at Camp Williams in central Utah. Big-D is part of a joint venture team lead by Balfour Beatty that is building the 1.6-million-sq-ft facility with such a high-security profile that team members are not allowed to disclose much about it. The project has more than 2,000 craftspeople and 130 managers on site, Moore says.

"It's the most incredible thing I've ever witnessed," he adds. "It's a complex team coming together and hitting our milestones: schedule, budget and a high level of quality." He's also pleased that local subs are well represented: 80% of specialty firms are Utah-based.

While Moore says that working as part of a large contracting joint venture on the data center has been "a good experience," Big-D hasn't been part of many such teams and isn't looking seriously at other big teaming opportunities like public-private partnerships, at least not yet.

"That's not on our radar so far," he says. "But this business changes all the time, and we're open to exploring new ways to serve our customers, old and new."