Texas 2010 rank: No. 20Green rank: No: 18 McCarthy Construction Co. joined the green movement a few years back, responding to client demand for sustainability and a greater understanding of environmental concepts by company leaders. Photo: Mccarthy Construction Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas Headquarters. Related Links: Top Green Contractors The Beck Group Bartlett Cocke General Contractors Manhattan Construction Co. Hensel Phelps Construction Co. “It was dual driven, one from the market and one from a philosophical commitment to the importance of sustainable building,” says Mark Elroy, a project director with McCarthy in Dallas. “We’ve taken steps to calculate
By fall, kayakers will enjoy the new waterfalls and whitewater in the Trinity River as part of the recreation portion of the $2.5- to $3-billion city of Dallas Trinity River Corridor project that is 20 mi long and encompasses 10,000 acres. The comprehensive plan includes projects for flood control, transportation, recreation, environmental restoration and economic development. Ark Contracting Services, Kennedale, will begin this month a $3.7-million contract to build concrete “speed bumps,” about 150 ft wide and about 250 ft apart in the river that will create a 3-ft drop and wave action that should thrill kayakers, says Rebecca Rasor,
The Fort Worth area has grown a lot since the historic 1949 Trinity River flood, which prompted creation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Fort Worth District and construction of the existing levee system. Urbanization has resulted in the addition of parking lots, airports and many hard surfaces that prevent absorption of water into ground soil and rivers, creating the opportunity for higher Trinity River levels and increased risk of flooding. “We have outgrown our existing levee system, and we needed a plan that will take us into the next 50 to 100 years,” says Woody Frossard, project manager
Texas 2010 rank: No. 13Green rank: 12 Bartlett Cocke General Contractors in San Antonio built green before sustainability began gaining in popularity. It completed the Lady Byrd Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin in the 1990s, paying careful attention not to disturb natural flowers and fauna. The company made a commitment to protecting the environment then, and it maintains it to this day. Photo: Bartlett Cocke Texas A&M University Veterinary Research Building. Related Links: Top Green Contractors The Beck Group McCarthy Construction Co. Manhattan Construction Co. Hensel Phelps Construction Co. “If you don’t take a sustainable approach to building, it cannot
Texas 2010 rank: No 19Green rank: No. 9 The Beck Group’s experience building green dates to the late 1990s. The company completed some of the first LEED buildings in Texas and two platinum projects—the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas and the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Orange, says Betsy del Monte, director of sustainability at Beck of Dallas. Now, green building has become an integral part of its business model. Photo: Beck Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center. Related Links: Top Green Contractors Bartlett Cocke General Contractors McCarthy Construction Co. Manhattan Construction
Texas gained nearly four million people during the past decade, making it one of the fastest growing states in the nation, and all of those folks depend on clean, potable water, spurring municipalities to build new plants and upgrade to add capacity at existing facilities. Photo BCRUA Pepper-Lawson is building the Brushy Creek Water Treatment Plant. Due to the size of the initial basin, crews poured segments of the first basin, then returned to pour the walls atop the mat. Related Links: Additional water treatment projects A nearly 150,000-person population growth in Williamson County, in suburban Austin, led three cities—Round
Construction firms are discovering that monitoring and analyzing safety observations collected electronically can improve safety by identifying hazards and taking action to eliminate problem areas. Photo: Jordan Construction Crew members enter SafetyNet data in the field. Photo: Jordan Construction Jordan Construction crews enter SafetyNet data in the field, tracking safety and quality information by documenting observations in various categories. “We’re trying to drive all incidents to zero,” says Cindy L. DePrater, vice president and corporate director of safety and loss control for Turner Construction Co. in Dallas. “If we know what we should be looking for out on the job,
The 125 Texas firms in our 15th annual Top Contractor rankings collectively billed about $24 billion in the state in 2009, a decrease of about $1 billion reported from the 2008, when we listed an additional five firms for a total of 130. Worldwide, the collective revenue generated by the 125 participating firms decreased from the previous year by about $20 billion; $80.4 billion was reported from all revenue worldwide compared to the previous year’s $102.8 billion. That $80.4 billion, however, is not drastically different than the $82.5 billion from the Top Contractors total of 2007, considered by many to
Diversification, backlogs and sharp pencils have kept some Texas contractors at the top of their game. A snapshot of this is seen in the profiles of the following six firms. Photo: Don Krueger Construction Don Krueger Construction is building Victoria West High School and Harold Cade Middle School in South Texas. E. E. Reed Construction recently completed the 25-story Legacy at Memorial apartment complex in Houston. Don Krueger Construction “We had our best year ever,” says Kevin R. Krueger, president of Don Krueger Construction in Victoria. “We got lucky and got most of our work the summer before everything went
Even though the idea of living in a community with easy access to jobs, public transit or freeways remains popular in Texas, not many projects are moving forward. Photo: TBG Partners TBG Partners provided landscape architecture and site-planning services for the Park 17 community in Dallas. Photo: UDR A rendering of the $1-billion Vitruvian Park, developed by UDR of Denver as an infill redevelopment project in Addison. Andres Construction of Dallas is building the first phase of residential and retail. “There’s still a huge interest by developers for mixed use, but financing is in disarray,” says David Lake, a partner
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