Southwest Contractor's Best of 2010 Awards

Southwest Contractor’s annual awards competition, now in its 13th year, honors the best in design and construction over the past year. Diverse categories, from engineering design to worship, acknowledge the excellent work and the variety of disciplines in the industry today.

Photo: Kirk Gittings Photography

The University of New Mexico, Cancer Center in Albuquerque won a Best of 2010 award in the health care category.

While it’s clear that the economy has taken a toll on the industry and the number of projects completed, judges still had to narrow down nearly 200 entries to the group of winners you will read about in the pages ahead, and they were impressed with the quality of the submissions.

The staff of Southwest Contractor would like to thank all of the firms who took time to submit their outstanding projects this year.

Some winners were eligible to compete in the McGraw-Hill Construction’s Best of the Best Awards for top honors among projects from all 10 Regional Publications throughout the U.S. This year’s national winners will be announced on our website and profiled in Engineering News-Record in January.

Judging Criteria

Project eligibility was limited to those that were completed between September 2009 and August 2010. Winning projects were chosen on how the following criteria related to the category in which the project was entered: Overcoming Challenges/Teamwork, safety, Innovation/Contribution to the Industry, Construction Quality/Craftsmanship and the function and Aesthetic Quality of the Design. A panel of judges was assembled in each state and met in September to select the winning projects. The panel included distinguished representatives from architecture firms, general contractors, engineers, developers, subcontractors and suppliers.

Judges arrived at the winners first through a scoring process, and then through discussion and consensus. Judges could select no winner in a category, and any judge affiliated with a project abstained from voting.

Southwest Contractor wishes to thank the following professionals who worked extremely hard to bring you this year’s winners:

Arizona Jury

Tyler Bohlender,Mortenson Construction
Linnea Brudenell, A. AIA, LEED AP, Green Ideas
William R. Ferris Jr., PE, Stantec
Steve M. Grauer,
Hensel Phelps Construction Co.
Kristen Howard, Rider Levett Bucknall
Cy Keener, ASUL
Vince Leskosky, AIA, IIDA,
Westlake Reed Leskosky
Scott Macpherson, Rider Levett Bucknall
Adam Sprenger, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP,
DWL Architects + Planners

Nevada Jury

Linnea Brudenell, A. AIA, LEED AP,
Green Ideas
Mike Cherwin, M.J.
Dean Construction, Inc.
Tony Cosentino, Perini Building Co.
Tony Illia, Construction Writer
Jozef Ulbrik,
Cuningham Group Architecture, P.A.

New Mexico Jury

Jaime Garrido, AIA, LEED AP, McCarthy Building Companies NM, Inc.
Michael Wm. Malloy, P.E.,
Gannett Fleming West, Inc.
Eva Paul, Molzen Corbin
Johnny Rehders, LEED AP,
Verde Sustainable Design Consultants
Bill Sabatini, AIA, ACHA,
Dekker/Perich/Sabatini
Sean White, Kiewit New Mexico Co.

Each winning project is profiled. The project team information was provided by the submitting firm or gathered from previous stories in this publication. Due to space limitations, not all project participants could be listed.

All photos are courtesy of the project’s submitter, unless otherwise noted.

Blair leads day-to-day operations of the ENR editorial team to ensure brand quality and further best practices. He spearheads ENR's various competitions, including Best Projects and the Award of Excellence, and organizes editorial content at events including the Top Young Professionals conference. A Jesse H. Neal, Construction Media Alliance and AZBEES-award-winning writer and videographer, Blair frequently contributes to ENR’s burgeoning video channel with project tour videos and interviews with industry leaders. He is also a frequent speaker and moderator on topics such as diversity and inclusion, design and jobsite technology, construction means and methods and marketing.