Learning Curve

As the school year nears its end, construction crews are gearing up for an intense summer of executing fast-tracked renovations and completing entirely new schools in time for fall.

On top of those demands, clients and project teams in Maryland’s K-12 market are grappling with other growing challenges. Tight budgets, high construction costs and long planning timelines mean teams need to expand their skills in value engineering, supply chain management and efficient (even inventive) design. At the same time, some projects require teams to meet heightened sustainability levels or deliver uncommon programming space.

Next level pre-con

“A problem we are seeing is a lot of budgets were developed years ago and prices have skyrocketed,” said Jonathan Goetz, President of Oak Contracting. “On some projects, we are faced with the need to cut $10 million or $20 million out of a $130 million project. That’s not a question of changing the floor materials. That means cutting programming, cutting square footage.”

That budget crunch is changing the nature of preconstruction work for Oak and other contractors in the K-12 market.

Early in the design process, Oak professionals explore big and novel changes, Goetz said. Those include eliminating shell space that is often included in new schools to accommodate future growth and searching for existing facilities in the community that could house some school functions. Oak also involves subcontractors in early discussions to identify cost-saving options.

“I tell my folks that when you go into a pre-construction meeting, there are no bad questions because we’re facing so many issues now that we haven’t faced before. You have to really think outside the box,” Goetz said.

Similarly, J. Vinton Schafer Construction’s team explores a broad range of project options during the design phase.

“We look at the budgets, schedules and constructability issues, and help find the better route,” said Wayne Gutermuth, Jr., Project Executive at J. Vinton Schafer.  “Does the budget and timeframe accommodate a new build or is it better to renovate a school? Does the existing school have the space, ceiling heights and structure that could meet today’s standards for teaching environments and sustainable buildings?”

For example, the structure of the1950s Homestead Wakefield Elementary School in Harford County “really wasn’t conducive to today’s teaching environments,” so school officials opted to replace it, he said.

The path to creating a viable plan for a new school or renovation/addition can generate a long progression of design changes and opportunities to save money or overspend.

“We’re part of every design meeting so we are seeing the constant iterations of the documents,” said Jonathan Dickinson, Senior Project Executive at Gilbane Building Company. “We provide continuous tracking estimates so everyone can see a running total for the job. You don’t want to go six months and suddenly discover you’ve blown the budget out of the water.”

Construction and renovation plans, Gutermuth added, must address one of the biggest challenges currently facing school systems. “They don’t have the ability to do maintenance. They just don’t have the staff or the budget to maintain their buildings.”

Given schools’ long project timelines, teams also have to exercise added vigilance in anticipating and managing materials and equipment costs, he said. “The whole industry, post-pandemic, has had to come up with new strategies on how to mitigate these risks.”

Extraordinary schools

Amid all of those challenges, teams are delivering modern, sustainable and even extraordinary school facilities.

Oak Contracting is currently building two highly specialized schools.

The 178,000-square-foot Center of Applied Technology – North for Anne Arundel County Public Schools will include modern training facilities for a wide range of trades, including carpentry, electrical, masonry, plumbing, HVAC, diesel and auto repair, aviation, robotics, pre-med, cosmetology and culinary arts.

The William S. Schmidt Outdoor Education Center for Prince George’s County Public Schools is a $55 million project in Brandywine. The complex will include student sleeping cabins, a camp center, a 275-seat dining hall, and outdoor classrooms and pavilion.

“It’s a different kind of construction with more timber-framed construction, a different kind of wood paneling called SIPS paneling and a lot of infrastructure,” Goetz said. “The site is so expansive that we are running fiber optic cable for half a mile to get Internet to the cabins.”

J. Vinton Schafer’s current K-12 projects include a 63,671-square-foot expansion of Dundalk High School/Sollers Point Technical High School. The project includes two separate building additions: a three-story classroom pod and a one-story performing arts wing.

Elsewhere in Baltimore County, Gilbane is constructing the new Scotts Branch Elementary School which will include an extra-large gymnasium, kitchen and activity room to accommodate after-school and other activities by community organizations.

 In Montgomery County, Gilbane is building the new JoAnn Leleck Elementary School, which will include an expanded gym, media center, and outdoor learning area. Like a growing number of schools in Maryland, it is also being built to much higher sustainability standards, Dickinson said.

“Recently, we are seeing a trend to go all electric with school buildings,” he said. “Maryland requires LEED Silver in new schools so that includes light-harvesting in classrooms, low-flow fixtures in washrooms. Montgomery County is doing more geothermal at schools and using white TPO roofing to reduce heat island effect. On the materials side, we are seeing requirements to buy materials within a 500-mile radius. There are also requirements to show where your demo and construction debris goes, and to make sure it is separated and recycled.”

Featured in this article: Oak Contracting, J. Vinton Schafer Construction, Gilbane Building Company

Expertise, discipline needed to contain energy costs

From rising electricity rates to expiring energy incentive programs to the implementation of Maryland’s Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS), construction clients and their project teams are wrestling with a shifting array of challenges as they try to contain energy costs.

The ability to deliver successful, affordable solutions hinges on some construction fundamentals.

High performance building design

Advanced electrical and mechanical systems, building automation and onsite generation can lower a building’s energy consumption and carbon footprint, but at a hefty and increasing cost.

“You don’t immediately go off and buy the most expensive, highest efficiency HVAC system. There’s a smarter approach to high-performance building design and that involves looking at passive strategies first,” said Sean Soboloski of James Posey Associates.

Soboloski points to the current renovation of the Macklin Tower Library at Montgomery College. Constructed in 1971, the library’s mass walls lacked ample insulation. By adding insulation and completing other building envelope improvements, the project team was able to reduce the size of the HVAC system required in the updated building. The project, he added, is on track to reduce the library’s energy use intensity by 48 percent.

Renovation projects often encounter a prime opportunity for energy efficiency, said Dave Hoffman, President of Gipe Associates. “A lot of older buildings had no ventilation and, since Covid, we have been very aware of the need for ventilation.”

Including energy recovery systems and demand-control ventilation in updated HVAC equipment can boost a building’s energy efficiency, Hoffman said. “Of course, those systems cost money but you typically get a payback within seven years.”

New systems, he added, can deliver other financial benefits. A current renovation of the South Dorchester K-to-8 school in Dorchester County is outfitting the school with a highly efficient geothermal system and relocated HVAC equipment to resolve a long-standing problem the school had with outdoor equipment getting flooded on the school’s low-lying site.

Mechanical and electrical upgrades, however, are becoming more expensive, Hoffman said. Project costs have risen 15 to 25 percent in recent years and federal legislation that will sunset the 30 percent tax credit for solar and geothermal systems could make those technologies unaffordable for many future projects. Solar systems will be eligible for tax credits until 2027 and geothermal systems until 2033.

“The Maryland Energy Administration has a robust program of grants and incentives to offset the costs of improvements and there’s been an uptick in people seeking those financing opportunities,” Soboloski said.

When assessing the costs and benefits of building upgrades, some clients also have to determine what upgrades will be needed to remain in compliance with BEPS and how much alternative compliance fees could cost them if they don’t complete those upgrades, he said.

The well-maintained building

Even the best designed mechanical and electrical systems, however, can fail to deliver expected performance and efficiencies if they are not operated precisely.

“It’s our job to make sure everything actually does work in harmony,” said Vincent Koren, Regional Vice President Mid-Atlantic for Albireo Energy, a building automation contractor.

Optimal building performance depends on employing the right hardware and software to ensure that all the different pieces of mechanical and electrical equipment operate together in concert and respond to the needs of building occupants.

To deliver that performance, “you’re talking about a matter of seconds in equipment staging, in exercising outputs like valves and actuators,” Koren said.

Numerous factors can compromise building performance: programming errors (for example, misidentifying a work holiday), a malfunctioning temperature or CO2 sensor, or “mechanical atrophy where valves don’t quite close,” he said.

Consequently, Albireo recommends that clients bring skilled building automation technicians onsite at least once a month and much more frequently for campuses or buildings with complex operations.

Featured in this article: James Posey Associates, Gipe Associates, Albireo Energy

Blakehurst Retirement Community

The renovation of Blakehurst Retirement Community was driven by one clear and lofty goal: Add a new layer of elegance — and a few wow factors — to an already topline retirement community.

The client and architect crafted a plan to upgrade nearly every public space from the hallways leading to residents’ apartments to the community’s flagship dining room, The Chesapeake. There, crews executed a complete upgrade that features new floors, an accent wall, vaulted ceilings, bold lighting and a new open-concept kitchen that enables diners to see high-end meals prepared.

Elsewhere, crews renovated the aquatic center and locker rooms, expanded an outdoor area for the Terrace Bistro, and transformed the community’s convenience store. They created the new Ridge Pub which features elaborate coiffured ceilings, and completely replaced the community’s main commercial kitchen. In the main entrance and grand stairway, they installed a new stone fireplace, huge pendant chandeliers and other upgrades.

The 2.5-year, 10-phase project required crews to not only deliver exquisite results but operate with extra care.

“We could be demolishing a ceiling grid, tearing out wallpaper or ripping up carpet in a hallway when an 80-year-old resident would walk out of their apartment and into an area where we were working. And since the hallways in the resident tower are only six feet wide, we couldn’t put a temporary partition down the middle and work on one side,” said Mark McGovern, Project Manager at Mullan Contracting. “I told everyone to treat this job like you’re working in someone’s living room. If anybody walks through, stop what you’re doing and be nice to them. They also had to maintain a very clean, orderly construction site.”

The phased renovation of public spaces, restaurants and other areas meant that extensive communication with the client, project partners and Blakehurst residents was also essential.

“I would go to community events in their auditorium and directly communicate with residents,” McGovern said. “Sometimes, there were over 250 people and I’d spend an hour answering their questions.”

The construction team faced other challenges.

Successive, previous alterations to electrical systems presented crews with existing conditions that didn’t meet code. Remediating those issues nearly doubled the cost of the project’s electrical work.

When it came time to rebuild the main commercial kitchen, the team had to devise a new way to meet the community’s food-preparation requirements.

“We brought in tractor trailers to create temporary kitchen facilities,” McGovern said.

A 53-foot trailer positioned at Blakehurst’s loading dock was outfitted as a full commercial kitchen. Another 24-foot trailer functioned as a dishwashing facility and two storage units provided cold storage and dry storage.

While the results of all the construction efforts are beautiful, McGovern says the best result of the project is unseen. “In two and a half years of construction, working around all those people, we didn’t have a single injury to a resident, a Blakehurst worker or any of my people.”

Featured in this article: Mullan Contracting, Ariosa & Company, Spellman Brady Interior Design, Moseley

BC&E Foundation News Round Up

Big Impact, Big Future

In April, 120 eighth graders from Howard County Public Schools (Murray Hill Middle, Harper’s Choice Middle and Patuxent Valley Middle School) got a hands-on introduction to careers in construction and the trades as part of the BC&E Foundation’s Builders-in-Training Workshop.

Thank you to Paula Baher from IEC Chesapeake, who helped coordinate, present, and host the workshop. BC&E Partners Ed Fincham with Ariosa & Company, LLC, John Stup from Bunting Door & Hardware Co., Inc./LokTek, and Daryl Vargas and Brittany Perigo from The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company engaged with students and provided valuable insights and hands-on learning experiences.

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Foundation grants support trades training for students

The BC&E Foundation has awarded 10 grants totaling $22,400 to Maryland schools and nonprofits providing construction trades training to young people.

“There is certainly a lot of need out there for this kind of funding,” said Curtis Dalsimer, Chair of the BC&E Foundation Grant Committee. “We received strong applications from programs across the greater Baltimore area.”

The Foundation received 19 applications, about half were new applicants to our program.

“It’s great that we were able to spread our resources out more,” Dalsimer added.

The Foundation prioritized programs that provide hands-on training to high school students and that clearly need support to cover the high cost of materials.

Grants went to schools and programs in Baltimore City and four surrounding counties:

• Carroll County Career and Technology Center Welding program — $2,200
• Carroll County Career and Technology Center HVAC program — $1,700
• Carroll County Career and Technology Center Masonry program — $2,000
• Carroll County Career and Technology Center Drafting program — $2,000
• Landsdowne High School Electrical program — $2,500
• Anne Arundel Career and Technical Education North — $2,500
• Howard Community College, Skilled Trades Program — $2,500
• Baltimore City ArchiNext — $2,500
• ACE Mentorship of Baltimore — $2,000
• Kennedy Kreiger — $2,500

Design Collective plans massive office renovation

In Baltimore, a huge and uncommon office transformation is underway. 

Crews are conducting a gut renovation of the 1.1 million-square-foot former Social Security Administration Metro West building. After the vacant property was acquired by private developers, the State of Maryland arranged to lease 550,000 square feet of office space that would be specially outfitted to serve as a central location for the Department of Health.

For architects at Design Collective, the project presented large-scale challenges. They would have to integrate the complex and diverse programs of multiple Department of Health divisions that are currently scattered across numerous locations, said Matt Herbert, Principal at Design Collective. They would have to create organization, a sense of place and an inviting work environment in a very large space.

“The creation of ‘streets’ and neighborhoods was used and repeated on each floor to create a recognizable plan to orient the building users while still providing flexibility for department organization,” Herbert said. “The design integrates strong graphic and color tones to provide a greatly enhanced environment for today’s government health agent.”

The robust structure of the 1980s building has aided the transformation. Construction experts on the project say the structure was originally designed to support forklifts that would carry pallets of social security documents. But the renovation has yielded a few surprises.

“The coolest discovery was the pneumatic tube system for mail distribution — an amazing piece of infrastructure that became quickly outmoded by the computer,” Herbert said.

SCIF Summit explores growing security needs and best practices

More stringent data security requirements, growing needs to upgrade SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) and the spread of cloud computing and AI prompted DAVIS Construction and Arium A/E to organize a SCIF Summit for the second year running.

“Many of our clients are facing an increasing need to upgrade existing SCIFs and secure facilities to both modernize infrastructure and address evolving threats,” said Dustin Hoffman, Director of Secure Spaces at DAVIS and organizer of the SCIF Summit in March. “By the end of 2028, facilities will be required to meet updated standards, including enhanced protection against physical penetration, sound leakage and RF signal transmission.”

Government officials are also enforcing current security requirements more stringently so “projects must be executed with greater precision and discipline because anything less will not pass final accreditation,” he said.

The growing use of AI, cloud computing and other advanced technologies has also expanded the need for SCIFs and secure facilities to a wider range of private companies, including “standard commercial office build-out situations where you might not traditionally expect that level of security,” Hoffman said.

The SCIF Summit, which featured several experts in secure facilities development, explored key topics in secure design and construction including:

• How electrostatic discharge can impact operations in a SCIF;
• RF attenuation challenges stemming from different applications and existing conditions;
• Tools and methodologies to detect and mitigate RF and electromagnetic threats within secure facilities: and
• The need for close collaboration across design, engineering and construction disciplines to successfully create secure environments.

BC&E welcomes two new members

Nanehi Networks LLC is an MDOT-certified, MBE delivering DAS, ERCES, low-voltage cabling, RF testing, and wireless infrastructure solutions with high-quality craftsmanship, responsive service, code-compliant execution, and competitive pricing. https://www.nanehi.com/

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RTM Engineering Consultants is a national engineering firm with 27 offices across the country. Its Hunt Valley office specializes in MEP engineering for institutional and educational projects. https://rtmec.com/

Legal remedies

Contractors working on courthouse projects — whether it’s the recent, 238,000-square-foot Howard County Circuit Court, the $6 million renovation of the Baltimore County Circuit Court or the planned $147 million Supreme Appellate Court in Annapolis — can rattle off the special challenges that such projects entail. There are sophisticated security systems, high-performance building systems, a large array of programming needs and, of course, stringent timelines to enable the legal system to get on with its work.

One recent project — construction of the Baltimore City Mabel Houze Hubbard District Court — embodied all of those challenges and then some.

To meet budget goals and secure a prime location, the court system opted to renovate a 1960s-era office building on North Calvert Street.

The project “almost redefined the concept of renovation,” said Vince Culotta, Project Manager at CAM Construction. “We stripped the building down to its skeleton.”

With just structural framing, concrete slabs and a roof left in place, the project team discovered the building needed even further demolition and reconstruction. The roof deck required a full replacement. The site’s water table, which lays just seven inches below the building’s slab, had caused significant deterioration to nearly 40 percent of the structural columns.

In addition to repairing and inserting new structural steel into the building, the project team had to add extensive shoring and more than 200 piles to support new elevator shafts, stair towers, large open spaces (such as courtrooms and staircases), extensive mechanical equipment, and other load that the building was not originally designed to hold. The structural steel work alone topped $9 million.

From public spaces to prison cells

The team also had to transform the space to support an array of functions from public spaces, courtrooms, bailiffs’ area and jury rooms to judges’ suites, offices, court records storage, a law library and a detention facility.

The holding cells for accused individuals meet maximum security standards.

 “They have concrete benches inside, security toilets, Folger Adams locks, security ceilings. There’s a sally port, a security guard entrance and an isolated, security elevator with a cell inside the elevator to take people to courtrooms,” said Angelo Munafo, Vice President, Real Estate Development for CAM Construction.

Advanced, integrated security systems ensure that individuals can only access certain parts of the building. Expanses of bullet-proof glass and other features were included in the design to protect judges and the building itself from attack.

To prevent a vehicle from crashing through the courthouse’s main entrance, the project included installing “ballistic-rated bollards in front of the building,” Culotta said. “If there’s a vehicle, even a pretty big vehicle, going 60 miles an hour, they can stop it in its tracks. These bollards extend six to seven feet into the ground into a foundation and there’s about 70 yards of concrete under the ground anchoring them.”

Delivering all those design elements required contractors to manage some daunting logistics.

Turning offices into courtrooms

The need for suitably large and open courtrooms required contractors to remove columns on the fourth and fifth floors, install larger beams (weighing 150 pounds a linear foot) and structural shoring down to the foundation. That effort opened up a 46-foot-wide expanse for each courtroom.

The desire for high ceilings in the former office space then plunged Ariosa & Company into a four-month redesign of the space.

“One of the most difficult parts of the project was trying to deliver 10-foot ceiling heights in the eight courtrooms,” said Drew Cheezum, Vice President, Project Management at Ariosa. “We had to redesign the entire fourth and fifth floors.”

By adding “chases on the sides of the courtrooms, we could run ductwork inside of them and flatten the ductwork so it was smaller. In some courtrooms, we wound up having ductwork go up into the joists and then drop down,” he said.

Installing all new DOAS and VRF HVAC equipment, all together totaling  560 tons of cooling, in a five-story, 170,000-square-foot building on a tight, urban site saddled Ariosa with another challenge. Crews had no access along three sides of the building and could only shut down one lane of Calvert Street between 9 am and 3 pm daily. The only other delivery option was late-night and weekend shifts.

Ariosa needed to bring in 6,000 linear feet of domestic water line, 5,000 feet of sanitary line, 2,000 feet of stormwater line, 6,000 feet of condensate piping, over 35,000 feet of refrigerant piping and dozens of pieces of HVAC equipment, some equaling the size of a small house.

To complete the rooftop installation, Ariosa choreographed an 18-hour crane operation one Saturday.

“Some of our guys started at four o’clock in the morning and didn’t leave until eight o’clock that night,” Cheezum said. “We had five DOAS units, some of them over 11,000 pounds, to go up on the roof and over 75 pieces of equipment in total. The operation involved over 12 tractor trailers and it was seamless. A tractor trailer would pull up, they would lift the equipment off the trailer and the next tractor trailer would pull in.”

BC&E member companies featured in this article: CAM Construction, Ariosa & Company

Value engineering the land

From typical retail projects to heavy industrial construction to high-end amenity developments, project teams are finding ways to cut costs and meet schedules by value engineering site work.

Greg Anderson, Senior Project Manager and Estimator at Iacoboni Site Specialists, Inc., says he value engineers nearly every project he assesses and that practice has been key to winning contracts.

Construction plans for new silos at Domino Sugar were initially proposed to handle stormwater management through a micro bioretention pond with a sand filter system located on a green area near the harbor’s edge.

“The location was a problem because the weight of the sand filter system which was going to be a 60 foot by 120 foot concrete structure that was eight feet deep, would have required sinking a lot of piles,” Anderson said.

Working with a design consultant, Anderson came up with a novel alternative: a modified sand filtration tank with added baffle walls at a different location. That VE option both met performance requirements and cut project costs by nearly $1 million, he said.

At the I-95 Abingdon Road interchange in Harford County, Wagman’s Geotechnical Construction group value engineered a retaining wall to address a constructability issue and keep the highway project on schedule. The wall which would tie into the wing wall of an existing bridge, was needed to support utilities and stormwater management.

“For the first 70 to 80 feet of the wall, there were power lines that crossed from one side of I-95 to the other and the design called for long H-piles to be installed in a cantilevered manner to provide lateral support for the retaining wall,” said Timothy O’Neill, Project Manager with Wagman. “There was no way to get a full-length pile placed in there. Splicing the pile with full-length welds every five feet would have been very expensive and not as structurally sound as they wanted.”

The original plan also meant that crews would likely have to deenergize the lines to complete construction.

Wagman and its inhouse engineering team devised a VE option “where we installed pairs of pipe pile in small, 10-foot segments under the power line,” O’Neill said. “We also changed the design of the rest of the wall from large, galvanized, expensive piles to standard H piles with a mechanical connection to a precast facing, instead of a poured facing.”

That solution allowed construction to proceed regardless of weather, kept the project on schedule, and shaved about $200,000 off the cost.

Not every project, however, requires a highly inventive and specialized VE option. Other solutions are based on core insights (and a few counterintuitive ones) about costs and constructability.

“Increasing the depth of topsoil in green areas could provide quite substantial savings,” Anderson said. “We look at the grading plan and the cut to fill or the cut to export. Sometimes if you raise the grade three-tenths of a foot across all elevations, you can balance the site so all the material gets used and there’s nothing to haul off.”

On renovation or redevelopment projects, crushing and reusing old concrete on site can be a valuable VE option, he said.

During construction of the new Walmart at Aviation Station on Eastern Boulevard, Iacoboni crushed 25,000 tons of existing concrete, processed it into RC6 and used it as fill for roadways and the new building pad.

“It took a little longer, but we were still able to meet the construction schedule and it saved a lot of money in trucking away material,” he said.

Iacoboni further lowered project costs by converting 7,000 cubic yards of excess soil into “beauty berms,” Anderson said. Since the site previously housed an aircraft factory, “the soil is contaminated material and would have to go to New Jersey to be burned. That costs about $1,500 a truckload. For 7,000 cubic yards, that’s well over $1 million.”

Lewis Contractors has adopted a practice of asking “simple, respectful queries about projects’ civil engineering and site design, and we have been able to discover areas where designs could be optimized or trimmed,” said Tyler Tate, President.

During an expansive renovation of the Baltimore County Club, Lewis determined that it could dramatically reduce the amount of piping running through the property and funnel stormwater drainage into a single, larger pipe, Tate said.

Lewis has achieved similar savings by streamlining infrastructure on other projects. For one project at the Maryland School for the Blind, Lewis installed a series of small bioretention ponds rather than larger, centralized stormwater management ponds.

“They were little ponds, probably eight by eight feet, and there were several of them around one building,” said Joe Ribero, General Superintendent. “Each would pick up the outflow from a couple of roof drains and maybe part of a parking lot, so you only had a small amount of drainage pipe going to each pond. You didn’t need the elaborate, underground piping system that would have been required with larger ponds.”

BC&E member companies featured in this article: Iacoboni Site Specialists, Inc., Wagman and Lewis Contractors.

Scaffold Resource claims industry championship

For the second year in a row, Scaffold Resource has won the Scaffold and Access Industry Association’s (SAIA) scaffold-building competition.

Conducted during the 2026 World of Concrete trade show, the SAIA competition challenged teams from the United States and the United Kingdom to complete a time-limited “surprise build” — a scaffold design presented to teams just hours before the event. Judges scored teams based on their speed, safety, accuracy and product quality.

The design was a complex arrangement of a scaffold with cantilevered sections that extended out in seven-foot increments.

“You had to interpret the drawings, come up with a plan on how you were going to tackle the build and then execute under pressure,” said Ulysses Medina, Director of Operations at Scaffold Resource.

The Scaffold Resource team, comprised of four builders and one coach (Juan Martinez, Henry Gutierrez, Kevin Carbajal, Antony Guevara and Coach Carlos Guevara), had prepared through an internal competition among employees. Team members spent the week before the trade show completing different builds in the company’s yard and developing a team chemistry, Medina said.

Claiming the championship for the second year “is a big deal in the scaffold access industry. Everybody is super proud. Internally, we were all sending text messages congratulating each other,” he said.

Beyond the thrill of the win and some bragging rights, the SAIA victory also produces some business benefits for Scaffold Resource, said Steve Quaerna, Vice President of Business Development and Event Infrastructure.

“We’re not the biggest scaffold company in the country, but we are growing fast and getting tremendous exposure as one of the most reputable and capable scaffold companies in the United States,” Quaerna said. “From a talent standpoint, it also improves our positioning in the industry. It’s hard to find good scaffold builders. Name recognition and recognition for our skill helps with recruitment.”