In advancing the goal of improving student capacity across North Clackamas School District, a middle school was converted and expanded into Adrienne C. Nelson High School. In leading each element of project delivery and logistics, Otak provided full project management services in bringing the district’s vision to reality.
Expanding Education Facilities to Meet a District’s Student Capacity Goals
Named in honor of the first African American woman appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court, Adrienne C. Nelson High School received a 140,000-square-foot addition from the original middle school with funding from a successful school bond measure. The conversion project also included updates to increase building energy efficiency and student safety while improving classroom technology infrastructure for STEM and vocational education programs. New classrooms, chemistry labs, and a career center were part of a two-story classroom wing while a 600-seat auditorium highlights the performing arts wing. Athletic facilities across the 66-acre site included improvements to multiple indoor gyms and weight rooms while new outdoor facilities added tennis courts, a football stadium with track and covered bleachers, a press box, and varsity baseball field.
In improving the supply of affordable housing options found in Portland, Oregon, the BRIDGE Waterleaf Building adds 178 units for families in the River Place neighborhood. With a unique shared post-tension podium deck and common parking garage with an adjacent building, the Otak team guided this project to completion as owner’s representative.
Managing the Addition of Affordable Housing with Community-Focused Amenities
Consisting of studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, the 155,649 square-foot Waterleaf Building is integrated into the heart of Portland’s urban community. Adjacent to public transit at a streetcar stop, the building also features a number of community-focused amenities from a ground floor gathering space and community kitchen to an adjoining exterior courtyard which includes a children’s playground. The community room aims to facilitate a number of uses including resident meetings and a variety of events while free Wi-Fi is found throughout the common areas. An adjoining Resident Services office creates accessibility to management by residents while two community laundry rooms, and trash/recycling rooms are found on each floor of the building.
An initial evaluation of the City of Monmouth’s City Hall – originally constructed in the 1920’s – led to the conclusion that a replacement was needed. After design and construction documents were completed, the estimates on cost exceeded budget by over 60%. Otak was brought on as owner’s representative to set a path forward for resolving the cost issues and to drive towards efficient completion.
Adding Efficiency to a Highly-Collaborative Value Engineering and Redesign Process
For nearly a century, the City of Monmouth had utilized a City Hall which was previously the city fire station. In its lifetime, the building developed issues including a leaking roof, fragile clay tile exterior construction, and staff squeezed into every possible space. The entire second floor and restrooms were only accessible by stairs while file storage in the basement would flood with a power loss. The new building was designed to address these issues while adding a number of features focused on sustainability, safety, and operational efficiency. Those ranged from solar power augmentation and electric vehicle charging stations to access security systems, seismic stability, and an elevator among other ADA-compliant elements. In an effort to add sustainable elements to the redesign process, locally-sourced materials are utilized in cross laminated timber (CLT) found throughout the structure. Through a highly-collaborative value engineering and redesign process, the site would also maintain its historic significance from old growth trees and parts incorporated from the Veteran’s Hall. Although the size of the building ultimately required adjustment, and the budget required supplementation, the final project delivered all the original scope in a slightly restructured format.
In addressing the gap in diverse and accessible education opportunities for youth faced by many rural areas, the Nestucca Valley High School Career Technical Education (CTE) Center was developed as part of a school bond program for the communities of Coastal Oregon. With a full complement of owner’s representative services, Otak led all aspects of project management from design to construction management in delivering this catalyst for real-world skill development to benefit the entire county of Tillamook, OR, for years to come.
Managing Development of a Flexible and Adaptable Education Facility to Benefit a County’s Communities
With forward-thinking goals around flexibility and adaptability, the design prioritized an expandable and flexible approach to be able to adapt quickly to industry-driven changes in the CTE program. Set behind the existing high school building for easy student and instructor access, a pre-engineered metal building (PEMB) was erected with a smaller “building within a building” constructed with a wood-framed second story inside the metal shell. Much more than a standard metal building, the facility features a custom wood-framed interior and an exterior with metal panels running horizontally rather than the standard vertical orientation while matching the adjacent high school’s colors. Overcoming a challenging site site with steep slopes, the hillside design also includes a private reservoir, filled by an artesian well, as a sustaining water supply system. By providing practical, hands-on learning experience for a variety of professional pathways while promoting an equitable and entrepreneurial culture, the Nestucca CTE Center aims to provide long-lasting benefits for its surrounding communities.
Bringing the Salmon Run Bell Tower back to life, a variety of critical repairs and upgrades were made to the historic structure while also restoring its water feature and surrounding art piece. The Otak team, providing construction management and inspection, worked closely with the City of Vancouver to oversee daily contractor operations as well as constructability and document review through project closeout to make this restoration a reality.
Overseeing the Restoration of a Historic Structure and Unique Features
Found in Esther Short Park–established in 1853, making it Washington State’s oldest public park–the Salmon Run Bell Tower was originally constructed in 2002 as part of an effort to revitalize the area for the community. The 60-foot tall structure was designed with features intended to honor the region’s indigenous people and connection with the Columbia River. The tower’s Glockenspiel consists of 25 cast bronze bells, each weighing between 20 and 400 pounds, using by individual strike mechanisms. It also includes four, six-foot tower clocks, along with a rotating diorama that highlights the story of Chinook salmon. A water feature includes a waterfall that cascades down a path of boulders, providing climbing and seating options for visitors of all ages. Over time, a combination of highly-chlorinated water and aging building components had left the water feature inoperable and the steel structure corroded. By shifting the construction area across different phases of the project, public safety was ensured while minimizing impact to park access. Along with restoring the original bronze art, structural steel repairs, upgrades to the pump house, and improved waterproofing all combined to bring the complete landmark back to working order for the first time in over a decade.
When it comes to project delivery, few methods are as cutting-edge as the design-build delivery, but what does it mean, and how do we differentiate it from a traditional delivery?
What is the Design-Build Delivery Method?
According to the Design Build Institute of America (DBIA), the design-build process is different from a traditional project delivery for a few reasons:
Rather than managing multiple contracts, the Owner manages only one contract with a single point of responsibility.
The single point of reference allows the designer and contractor work together from the beginning as a “Design Build Entity,” providing unified project recommendations to fit the Owner’s schedule and budget.
Any changes are addressed by the entire team rather than in siloes of the project, leading to collaborative problem-solving and innovation.
It all comes down to single-source contracting, but what’s important here is the culture of collaboration inherent in design-build. Teams truly work as a team without an adversarial relationship between subdivisions, and that means everything for successful, innovative delivery.
The Portland Building team at the DBIA Awards 2022
The DBIA has a storied history of sharing the wonders of design-build with the greater industry. Formed in 1993, it started as a handful of engineers, architects, and builders who sought to make project delivery both easier and scalable. The organization is now the authority on the design-build process, comprised of not just professionals but academics, students, and leaders from all over the country.
What’s more, they host one of the biggest industry events in the country commemorating use of the method every year.
What is the Design-Build Conference & Expo?
The Design-Build Conference & Expo happens in various locations and hosts a slew of industry professionals who come to network and learn from one another.
Projects from all over the U.S. are nominated for their historic delivery methods, and experts from across the AEC industry judge and award firms based on a variety of criteria provided by the DBIA.
“The Portland Building is by far, one of the defining projects of my career and one of the best teams I’ve worked with in my life.”
Miro Radoynovski – Portland Building Project Manager
Otak attended the annual event in Las Vegas in November 2022, where we were up for multiple awards for our owner’s representative work on The Portland Building in our home city of Portland, OR.
What Did the Portland Building Win?
At the 2022 Design-Build Conference & Expo, the Portland Building was nominated for three DBIA awards in the category of rehabilitation, renovation and restoration. The project ultimately swept all three.
Best in Process – Rehabilitation / Renovation / Restoration
National Award of Excellence – Rehabilitation / Renovation / Restoration
National Award of Merit – Rehabilitation / Renovation / Restoration
The awards reinforced the success felt across the project team, including the city of Portland. For the DBIA, success is defined in a variety of ways and the details of the Portland Building were clearly aligned with those criteria.
Delivering an Award-Winning Project: What the DBIA Looks For
Winning projects are all evaluated on the same criteria, based on DBIA’s Design Build Done Right framework.
Projects are considered if they achieve the best value while meeting design and construction quality, cost and schedule goals. They must also demonstrate advanced and innovative application of total integrated project delivery, including design-build best practices to achieve exceptional outcomes.
Credit: DLR Group
But what is the Design Build Done Right framework?
The overview of it is that it’s a universally applicable set of best practices and principles that can aid in the delivery of any design-build project. The DBIA provides a set of guidelines, and more importantly real-world techniques, that facilitate successful projects from procuring services to execution, exemplified by the following aspects of delivery:
Schedule and cost performance
Effective processes
Interdisciplinary teamwork
Problem solving
Excellence in design
Use of technology
Based on these elements of successful design-build, Otak is proud to say we won multiple awards the evening of the conference, which we’ll get into next.
Building a Winning Case in The Portland Building
The Portland Building project is a 15-story high-rise occupied by City of Portland bureaus. As an internationally renowned architectural example of post-Modernism designed by Michael Graves, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and houses a number of government departments all working in tandem to make Portland run smoothly.
Exterior view of the Portland Building (Photo Credit: James Ewing, JBSA)
The project addressed the building envelope issues by covering the concrete façade with a unitized curtain wall and terracotta rain screen tiles that eliminated leaking while preserving its historic status and appearance. The restored façade also greatly improved the poor natural lighting which, combined with a full interior remodel, drastically transformed the building’s working environment. Otak also organized the temporary relocation of all the city’s 1,400+ staff to ensure that the city maintained normal operations throughout the project.
However, what’s really interesting (and unique) about the project is its cutting-edge delivery method, one that takes DBIA guidelines and brings them to the next level—progressive design-build.
Progressive Design-Build Delivery of the City of Portland’s Vision
The City of Portland initiated a $195 million project to reconstruct the building, making it the city’s largest capital project.
Such an innovative method of delivery was needed to address several of the City’s objectives with construction:
Fix the enclosure performance problems—no more leaks and better daylighting
Preserve the historic integrity of the exterior—get through landmark approval process
Upgrade the seismic performance of the building to an appropriate standard
Replace building mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems
Remedy urban design deficiencies at the base
Improve the workplace and public engagement areas
Meet requirements for LEED Gold
What Does Progressive Design-Build Mean?
Essentially, a progressive design-build delivery method is a form of early contractor involvement that can help reduce risk and increase collaboration among all stakeholders. It’s the way a construction project design is developed by the owner and design-builders using a step-by-step process.
The DBIA again states that progressive design-build allows the design and construction team to collaborate during the earliest stages of project development. This enables the greatest amount of engagement between the three key players in a construction contract: the owner, the designer, and the contractor. Ultimately, Otak advocated that this unique method was best for meeting the needs of the project in terms of complexity and scheduling needs.
Best Value for Dollar Spent: Collaborative Team Environment, Optimal Efficiency
The Progressive Design-Build model allowed for the right voices to be in the room to make the best decisions at the right time. From the outset, Otak successfully met the greatest challenge of the method—getting all team members to buy in to a lean design process and trust it would deliver an innovative project. The team also utilized the “SmartStart” partnering process, where we discussed and committed to a community-focused assessment of risk and project progress which was key to establishing a collaborative environment.
Schedule, scope, and design intent were optimized, as the entire team was at the table making informed decisions each step of the way.
Planning sessions and project milestone dates were incorporated into scheduling from the very beginning to inspire active participation between stakeholders for effective schedule management.
Technology Utilization
Quality assurance and control was also highly collaborative, and we deployed high-tech tools like VR, Clash Detection, and Laser Scanning for building information modeling (BIM) work to improve access to facilities and streamline operations of the building post-construction.
A huge part of this effort was not only relocating all city employees into temporary office spaces, but also bringing them back when construction was completed, and the building envelope was brought up to code. Thanks to the progressive design-build method these goals were accomplished through early planning and team effort to get the job done.
Design Solutions to Historic Reconstruction Challenges
With every project comes challenges. This can be particularly true for buildings of historic relevance, for which the Portland Building is a perfect example.
The City’s vision was such that the building needed to be drastically updated while maintaining it’s iconic design elements, while enhancing the working environment. The existing concrete exterior, external glazing, the famous Portlandia sculpture, and getting the space approved as a city landmark were all hurdles that made progressive design-build the choice of the greater team.
View of “Portlandia,” the copper sculpture at the Portland Building (Photo Credit: James Ewing, JBSA)
Considerations were also made to maintain the internationally recognized post-Modern architecture style, and the stakes were high. The building has historic significance of “exceptional importance” on the National Register of Historic Places, which means extra care had to be taken in order to both preserve and renovate the space. The building also needed to be upgraded from a sustainability perspective, a viewpoint that has become an Otak calling card.
Sustainable and Efficient Systems
In terms of being sustainable, the Portland Building was truly brought into the modern era. The project made improvements to light fixtures allowing for greater daylighting, reducing energy costs and carbon footprints in the process.
The envelope of the building also needed to be revitalized in order to fix leaking issues in a famously rainy city. Low emitting materials were also used to compensate for the existing concrete of the structure, which we did by improving existing mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, among others.
The project also pursued a LEED Gold Building certification, and the team’s efforts led to the project exceeding it’s goals in achieving both WELL and LEED Platinum certification.
Public Involvement and Inclusive Project Goals
Not only did the project need to be sustainable, but it also needed to be equitable to address the needs of the city and align with its values. The vision was to both inspire and influence the public, leading to a two-fold goal— serving the public well and becoming an employer of choice to bolster talent acquisition into the space. To align with those goals, our team led visioning sessions on both the public and employee experience, ultimately transforming the building’s poorly lit, substandard interior into a truly exceptional interior experience for all.
Social and community impacts were also top of mind. A targeted community outreach effort was implemented to ensure DMWESB firms were aware of upcoming opportunities. This effort included informational meetings, open houses, trade show events, one-on-one meetings, and sourcing a local non-profit to provide consultation to DMWESB firms bidding on the project. Additionally, the project promoted design and construction career opportunities by hosting eight separate tours for high school and college students. Otak is proud to say that in the process we exceeded MWDBE goals.
The End Result
By utilizing a progressive design-build framework, inspiring both the team and the community, and delivering on early promises thanks to early planning, the result of our efforts yielded a multi-award-winning project.
Otak would like to extend a formal thank you to the DBIA for bestowing us with these accolades, which we take to heart. We’re proud we had the opportunity to play an outsized role in the successful delivery of the project, and our mission to transform the built environment while keeping the community in mind remains one of our cornerstones.
You can find out more about the complete list of DBIA award winners, and we look forward to the opportunity of highlighting our projects in the future
Adding seismic resilience and capacity to serve a growing community, the Benton County Courthouse and Emergency Operations Center would be developed as two buildings on a 20-acre greenfield site. As owner’s representative, Otak has provided leadership on this project through significant permitting and land use processes in each step of bringing this concept into reality.
Streamlining Multiple Project Phases to Improve Community Facilities
Across approximately 48,892 square-feet over three stories, the new Benton County Courthouse is designed to support multiple essential community functions. Development of this greenfield site (with no existing infrastructure) required extensive master planning, including space for sufficient public parking as well as secure staff parking. With four courtrooms, jury deliberation and assembly spaces, among other offices, the design also incorporates safe circulation for judges, victims and other user groups outside the courtroom. The new Emergency Operations Center is a 7,490 square-foot facility that adds multiple rooms for training, search and rescue, and space for other emergency activations. That building utilizes a pre-engineered metal building (PEMB) structure to optimize the project budget.
The Sheridan School District is on a mission to, “provide each student a diverse education in a safe and supportive environment; that promotes self-discipline, motivation, and excellence in learning.” With a 2017 bond program underway, updates to facilities across the district were made possible in order to better serve that mission.
Bond Pre-Planning and A Long Range Facility Plan for School District Renovations
In its efforts to meet the district’s mission and overarching goals in developing students to become self-sufficient adults, the Sheridan High School envisioned significant upgrades to its interior and exterior. Renovations also extended to the K-8 Faulconer Chapman School. The bond program would allow for the complete replacement of domestic water piping and the hydronics delivery system. Those enhancements also involved a number of other updates including vinyl asbestos tiling (VAT) abatement, complete restroom remodels, direct digital control system (DDC) for heating, and grandstand development for sports facilities. Providing owner’s representative and construction management services, Otak’s continuous involvement on the Sheridan School District bond planning would permeate through all phases of the project. From value engineering, procurement, contractor selection, and construction management to overseeing design, procurement, construction, and quality control. Along with a long range facility plan (10 year) in place for the Barbara Roberts Career Tech Center, the Sheridan School District bond program will benefit students and the community for years to come.
The YMCA has a long, storied history of impact in communities across the globe. For The Family YMCA of Marion and Polk Counties, that history would be ushered into the future from it’s new community center in Salem, Oregon.
A Efficient Facility for Community Programs
With 128 years of of service, The Family YMCA of Marion and Polk Counties had been operating out of their 92-year-old building with limited efficiency. The outdated facility cost more than $550,000 a year to maintain and lacked the accommodations necessary to fully meet the needs of the community. In order to advance it’s daily goals of strengthening a diverse array of family units and furthering other social issues, the organization expanded it’s program service model and now has a community center with the capacity to support it’s broader mission. The ability to provide youth development, healthy living and social responsibility is enhanced with the expansion of a number of facility features including a rooftop running track, heated indoor swimming pool, three-court gymnasium, and expanded community spaces. From sourcing regional materials to a natural lighting infrastructure and glazing that maximizes daylight harvesting, there are a number of elements designed (primarily with the HVAC system) to exceed code minimums with a sustainability-focused design. As owner’s representative on the project, Otak has guided the three-story, 51,000 square foot community center into development while maintaining it’s place in downtown Salem, Oregon.
Originally built in 1936 as a post office, the site for the new Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Executive Building had long been under consideration by the state of Oregon for potential redevelopment. With $45 million in legislative funding approved, acting on the facility’s potential would become possible for DAS utilizing an owner’s representative to help make those plans a reality.
Advancing Client Goals to Modernize a Historic Building
Sitting to the west of the Capitol Building, the structure was erected at a cost of $310,000 and was dedicated on October 16, 1937. It was the only marble post office west of the Mississippi River outside of Denver’s. It served as Salem’s post office until 1976, when a new building on 25th Street took its place. Two years later an addition was built onto the 63,000 square-foot space but had seen no major upgrades since. Today, the site hosts DAS as the State of Oregon Executive Building and will continue to do so in the future as a modernized facility after the renovation project gets underway.
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