Kitchell Elevates Structures and Ideals Through Innovation
Kitchell is a name synonymous with the growth of Arizona and the West; its projects have dotted the regional landscape since the firm was founded in 1950. From hospitals to prisons and everything in between, the company has built virtually every building type in a wide variety of locales and keeps its focus on building long-term client relationships, fostering internal talent and driving innovation.
Much of the culture within Phoenix-based Kitchell and its core contracting business, Kitchell Contractors Inc., was embedded in the firm's DNA by founder Sam Kitchell, according to Dan Pierce, president.
"This whole company's philosophy and culture is built upon Sam and how he thought," Pierce says. "He was very good with people and relationships."
As a result, Kitchell posted a nearly 30% increase in revenue last year, outpacing most other companies on the Top Contractors list. The firm earned $314 million in 2012, up $72 million from 2011.
But as it is with all successful contracting firms, getting selected for a job ultimately depends on the quality of the people that build the project and how they serve their clients.
"Our experience qualifies us for a job, but our people put us over the top and allow us to be awarded a job," says Steve Whitworth, division manager of health care. "Kitchell has 30 years of hospital experience, but if we don't have people that have done [that kind of work], or the hospital doesn't trust us to build the facility, we are no better than anyone else. It sounds cliché, but that is what it is all about. The company gets you qualified, the people get you the job."
The University of New Mexico Sandoval Regional Medical Center and medical office building project in Rio Rancho, N.M., was one of the firm's higher-profile achievements in 2012. The 60-acre project comprises a 168,500-sq-ft in-patient teaching hospital with 48 acute care patient beds, 12 intensive care beds, eight behavioral health beds, six operating rooms and 12 emergency department exam rooms. The hospital can expand to 300 beds by means of building pads incorporated into the master plan. The project also included a 65,000-sq-ft adjacent medical office building.
Native American Division
A dedication to people and relationships that reflects Sam Kitchell's vision is what the Native American department at Kitchell is all about, according to Brad Gabel, vice president of that division. Although the Native American construction market has been a focus of Kitchell for several decades, the firm bolstered its presence with a joint venture four years ago with Bitco, a small Navajo-owned firm in Albuquerque. The partnership has allowed Kitchell to penetrate the market by demonstrating that the firm understands what is important to Native American cultures.
"We thought that the Native American market was being underserved and if we brought honesty and integrity to that market, we would be successful," Gabel says. "To get into the Navajo market and do more Native American work, you almost have to have the joint venture part—although we have some [projects] that are not. But in order to be steady participants in those markets, you have to have those connections."
Currently, Bitco-Kitchell is building the $34-million, 70,000-sq-ft Kayenta Multi-Purpose Justice Center in northern Arizona, approximately 25 miles south of Monument Valley. The single-level project, which is scheduled for completion in 2014, includes a 54,000-sq-ft corrections building with 84 beds as well as short-term holding areas for male and female adults and juveniles and a 16,500-sq-ft structure that will primarily be used for dispatch, investigations and other support purposes.
In order to demonstrate that Native American values and ideals are important to Kitchell, the company regularly holds annual Native American Cultural Sensitivity seminars, hosted by Jeff Begay, director of client services for the Native American division and a member of the Navajo Nation. Most seminars include invited guests from various tribal communities who speak to their history and culture.
"[The seminars] are very popular; even people in accounting can and do come because they are just interested," Gabel says.
Growing Design-Build Market
With the trust and buy-in that Kitchell has developed through its relationships with its clients, it has allowed the firm to expand its use of design-build and construction manager at-risk principles, even with clients that traditionally have shied away from those methods.
In 2012, the company began work on designing and constructing a $125-million patient tower at ">Chandler Regional Medical Center in Chandler, Ariz., with Phoenix-based design firm Orcutt/Winslow. The five-story inpatient tower will add 100 beds and will accommodate the hospital's emergency and medical-surgical services, with 30 intensive care rooms, six additional operating suites and ancillary support infrastructure that includes the addition of a chapel.
"Design-build has been a delivery that has been misunderstood over the years," Whitworth says. "The client's biggest fear is a loss of control—that if they turned it over to a design-builder they would get a box when what they wanted was an octagon."
He says the streamlined impacts of design-build will become even more attractive in the future, adding that it is a more harmonious and symbiotic design process that can merge uniqueness with prefabrication.
"More and more work is being done off site because it can be done in a controlled environment where guys are not doing overhead pipe racks on ladders in a hallway," Whitworth says. "They are doing them in a shop on a rack on a floor. It is actually more efficient and cheaper in the long run. We are being forced by the industry to look for a faster, cheaper way to do things without reducing quality. Pre-assembly and prefabrication is just one way to do it."
Innovation Drives the Future
Always looking for ways to better serve its clients, Whitworth says the firm remains vigilant to uncover any sort of innovation.
"Most people are starting to do [pre-assembly and pre-fabrication] now, but we need to look at pre-assembly 2.0. That is where we have to go," Whitworth says.
The seeds of pre-assembly 2.0 and the other initiatives that are part of Kitchell's perpetual quest for innovation are sown within the integrated services division, which is led by Scott Root.
"The biggest thing that is different from other firms in the industry is that as part of our integrated services, we have combined the quality group, the virtual construction group, the estimating group and the scheduling group, and really play off each of the strengths," Root says. "That has helped us to home in and push out the pieces into the field better and more efficiently."
He said this process has allowed the estimating staff do their work better and more accurately.
"When we do pricing, our estimators by nature are probably not going to be the most sophisticated at jumping into a three-dimensional model and getting information," Root says. "They are used to seeing things two dimensionally and they are excellent at it, but if we can shave off 30% of the time on the takeoff by having someone who is much faster and quicker at extracting that takeoff and using the 2D drawing as a check off and having that 3D information from the BIM model pushed into the workflow, we have accelerated their ability to use the art of estimating instead of being the number crunchers."
Root says in the future, a typical Kitchell project might utilize advanced 3D visualization tools inside the building shell to display where the interior components should be installed.
"One of the things that Brent [Moszeter, senior superintendent on the Chandler Regional Hospital project] is really pushing me on is taking this information and creating something like a hologram into the space where you can follow the hologram and build the walls and the systems right in the space so that we don't have to constantly wonder how it goes together," says Root. "It is not quite there yet, though."
This forward-thinking use of technology could not only aid workers in the field but also help the client with maintenance and operations, yet another example of Kitchell's client-centric DNA.
