A museum, a casino and a swinging bridge represent the diversity of ENR Northwest’s 2020 Best Projects. Each year, ENR regional editors assemble a group of judges with a range of  expertise to review, score and determine the winning projects for each region. In 2020, ENR Northwest, which includes Alaska, Oregon and Washington, received more than 60 entries.

The Northwest Project of the Year award went to I-90/Snowshed to Keechelus Dam Phase 1C, submitted by contractor Guy F. Atkinson Construction. The Washington State Dept. of Transportation’s project widened nearly three miles of highway and constructed two 1,200-ft-long bridges. To learn more about this project, which also won the Best Project award in the highway/bridge category and an Excellence in Safety award of merit, see the profile on page 18.

ENR thanks this year’s judges, listed below, who offered their time and expertise to determine the winners. ENR judges independently review entries, score them on prespecified criteria and convene with their fellow judges on the final winners. Judges were asked to recuse themselves if they or their firm participated in the project or they felt some other conflict of interest. The judges were:

  • Brad Carpenter, Clive Wilkinson Architects
  • Brandon Maurisak, AECOM
  • Feng Li, Golder Associates
  • Hooman Hosseinpour, Golder Associates
  • Jennifer Ibrahim, HNTB
  • John Schaufelberger, University of Washington
  • Sam Holden, Skanska USA Building

A separate panel of safety experts judged projects based on their safety records. This year’s safety judges were Craig Decesare, WSP; Jeff Smith, Turner Construction Co.; and John McKenzie, JE Dunn Construction. They named the Puyallup Tribe of Indians’ Emerald Queen Casino and Parking Garage as the ENR Northwest 2020 Excellence in Safety award winner. The project, led by joint venture AbsherKitchell, clocked more than 900,000 work hours over 1,100 days. The casino also won an award of merit in the sports/entertainment category.