Proposed in 2003, the Nakheel Tower was described by the Council on Vertical Urbanization as “a beacon of inspiration for the region and the world, incorporating elements from Islamic culture.” More than another large-scale construction project, the $38 billion USD complex was set to contain four towers appearing as one, connected by sky bridges about every 25 floors. A mixed-use space, it was to include apartments, commercial, retail, hotel and hospitality space, cultural centres, restaurants, and gyms, along with parks, canals, and other outdoor amenities.

Despite foundation work and initial piling put in place, the ambitious project halted indefinitely in early 2009 because of the global economic downturn. Although unfinished to this day, Nakheel Tower brought the idea of vertical cities to the minds of many who had never considered the concept.

Beyond skyscrapers
While we might think of vertical cities as being similar to skyscrapers, there are important differences. Coined in the 1880s, ‘skyscraper’ originally referred to buildings between 10 and 20 storeys. Thanks to architectural innovations like underground piers, girders, columns, and wrought iron or cast iron aboveground frames, these buildings grew taller over time. Today, not every tall building is a skyscraper, which usually refers to structures over 100 to 150 meters (328 to 492 feet).

Unlike skyscrapers—often dedicated to offices, residential spaces, or a mix of the two—vertical cities often comprise several enormous, multi-story structures and are truly mixed-use, housing day-to-day amenities like workplaces, recreation areas, gyms, green spaces (sky parks), restaurants, retail, medical facilities, movie theatres, schools, and even agricultural areas. Many times, huge vertical city towers are connected, making it easy to access different buildings without having to step outside.

Advantages of vertical cities
Sometimes called ‘vertical urbanisms,’ vertical cities boast myriad benefits because of their all-in-one designs. Rather than one building dedicated to residential space, another focused on offices, and still others designated for retail, entertainment, restaurant, sports, medical, or administrative spaces, vertical cities bring everything together in one highly functional complex. Redefining urban living, vertical cities like The Line in Saudi Arabia and Melbourne’s Southbank by Beulah effectively unite residential, commercial areas, and other elements. Some, like the innovative Bosco Verticale in Milan, focus on greenery, which improves air quality, fosters natural wildlife habitats, and showcases biodiversity.

As land becomes more expensive and increasingly scarce, large cities worldwide are having to build up, not out. Fast disappearing are the days of single-family homes in favour of skyscrapers, which enable greater density. This is especially evident in 569 skyscraper-strong Hong Kong; Shenzhen, China and its 468 skyscrapers; and New York City, home to over 300 skyscrapers. At 128 storeys and 632 meters (2,073 feet), the Shanghai Tower remains the tallest building in China, able to accommodate 16,000 people.

Along with more efficient land use by building up on a smaller footprint, vertical cities help to combat urban sprawl, congestion, and pollution. Combining numerous amenities in mega-structures means spaces are more efficient; instead of driving from one location to another, residents can walk, bike, or use integrated transit, saving time and money. And much like regular cities, vertical cities are self-sufficient, with their own water, sewage, and recycling systems built in.

Sarah Smith of Smart Cities Dive, which focuses on trends shaping today’s cities and municipalities, says vertical cities are “an entire human habitat contained in a massive skyscraper,” and that they “hold the key to solving overpopulation and overcrowding.” Although no one solution will ‘fix’ housing, vertical cities can go a long way toward addressing these and other issues.

Vertical cities are a natural extension of skyscrapers like the Shanghai Tower, and like massive towers, can go a long way toward alleviating housing shortages and overcrowding. Spread across multiple interconnected towers and millions of square feet, it is possible for vertical cities to accommodate 30,000 or more residents while using far less land than buildings of fewer floors. This is especially important today, with more and more farmland, ravines, forests, and other natural spaces being lost forever to massive new housing developments. In recent years, for instance, the Ontario government did an about-face on converting thousands of acres of protected land in the province’s Greenbelt.

Vertical challenges
Just like creating a skyscraper, building vertical cities is a major construction undertaking, and funding remains an issue. Vertical cities are not one-off buildings, but enormous projects that take years to construct. Depending on size, skyscrapers cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and more, to build; vertical cities require the same parameters, including the cost of land, paying for site surveyors, civil, mechanical, and structural engineers, permits and building codes, architects, and designers. And then there is the cost of materials like reinforced steel and aluminum, concrete, glass, insulation, drywall, plumbing supplies, electrical wiring, and more. To ensure utilities like HVAC, electricity, and water and sewage are consistently available to residents from the ground floor to the hundredth, mechanical systems must be designed to ensure consistency at all heights. This requires localized units, staged water pumping and intermediate storage tanks, chillers, heat pumps, and other costly mechanicals.

The enormous cost of vertical cities expands with the number of towers and their heights. Extremely tall buildings require dozens of elevators servicing different floors and sky lobbies. (Essentially transfer points in skyscrapers, sky lobbies save floor space and serve as transfer points between express and local elevators.)

Another consideration of living and working in a vertical city is maintaining one’s well-being, both physical and emotional. While having live and work amenities in one location is practical because it saves traveling time, it can lead to a sedentary lifestyle, since there is less need to go outdoors. This comes with several drawbacks, including a lack of social interaction and feelings of anonymity. Being indoors also means a lack of sunlight and disconnection from natural spaces such as parks, forests, and bodies of water. Depending on the time of day and how the towers are oriented, it is also possible to be in shadow for hours at a time.

Sky-high towers can greatly increase housing density and free up land for agriculture and nature, yet vertical cities must also be designed to balance functionality with a healthy lifestyle. Their success will ultimately depend on more than engineering feats or record-breaking heights. Natural light, access to green space, opportunities for social interaction, pedestrian-friendly environments, and connections to the world beyond the building will all be essential to creating places where people genuinely want to live.

As cities continue to grow and available land becomes increasingly scarce, the vertical city may offer one possible answer to the challenge of accommodating more people without endlessly expanding outward. By bringing homes, workplaces, services, recreation, and green spaces together within a relatively small footprint, these developments have the potential to make better use of land while reducing some of the environmental and infrastructure pressures associated with urban sprawl.

The concept is still evolving, and projects such as Nakheel Tower demonstrate just how difficult (and expensive) it can be to turn such an ambitious vision into reality. Yet the idea has endured. The vertical city is no longer simply a vision of a distant future but an increasingly important part of the conversation about how—and where—we will live as urban populations continue to rise. The challenge now is not simply to build higher, but to build smarter, creating complete, livable communities that balance density, efficiency, sustainability, and human needs.

The post Building Up, Not Out<p class="company">The Promise of Vertical Cities</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

Forty years later, many of these once-bustling shopping malls have closed or are shadows of their former selves. Once-massive retailer Sears—which had about 3,500 locations nationwide at its peak—has been largely replaced by e-commerce sites and has just five full-line department stores remaining in the United States. So what lies ahead for these seemingly outdated spaces?

A new life for the oldest mall
For GGLO, the decline of shopping malls has presented exciting new opportunities, as in the spectacular revival of Seattle’s famous Northgate Mall.

In the post-World War II glory years, Northgate became the first shopping mall built in America. Like other malls, it vigorously expanded over the decades, at its busiest drawing tenants like Toys “R” Us, Foot Locker, and Nordstrom. Then the tide slowly began to turn, and by 2018-2019, large retailers like Macy’s and JCPenney announced they were closing.

But it wasn’t the end of the line. GGLO was approached by a long-time housing developer client who looked at vacant land, including large, empty parking lots surrounding the mall, and wondered if housing could be developed. Soon into this study, it was questioned if housing would be successful if the mall was to remain in its original form.

This question unlocked the opportunity to reimagine the 55-acre mall site into a mixed-use center with new residential housing, office, hotel space, and a community ice rink which is also the practice facility for the National Hockey League’s Seattle Kraken.

“The work we’re doing out at Northgate in Seattle is really transformative,” says Jon Hall, AIA, LEED AP BD+C & Homes, and member and principal of GGLO. In the works for about a decade, the massive project will continue for another 10 to 20 years. “It’s massive,” he says.

Just nine miles north of central Seattle, Northgate Mall (now known as Northgate Station) was recently connected to downtown Seattle and the airport with a light rail line. This rail line now provides transit access to and from this vibrant mixed-use area, which GGLO describes as innovative, contemporary, and “a transformative model for future mall conversions.”

With existing tenants like Starbucks, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Barnes & Noble, the Seattle Kraken Team Store, and Bank of America, and with the now completed first of four mixed-use apartment buildings, first of two new hotels, and future new tenants like Shake Shack and Mendocino Farms, Northgate is once again becoming a strong regional draw.

An integrated design experience
Renowned as one of America’s foremost multidisciplinary architectural firms, GGLO was founded by Bill Gaylord, Alan Grainger, Chris Libby, and Clayton O’Brien Smith, as reflected in the name “GGLO.”

Today, the GGLO team of about 50 includes architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and urban planners. Emphasizing the importance of environmental sustainability and social equity, the firm is truly a one-stop shop for its clients, many of whom are repeat clients. “We strive for an integrated design experience,” says Hall. “Everything from the outside to the inside, and everything from the scale of a 100-acre master plan to the cabinetry details on the interior of a clubhouse. No project is too big or too small.” Today, GGLO serves clients from its locations in Seattle, Washington and Boise, Idaho.

Celebrating his 30^th year with the firm, Hall has watched the market evolve for decades, including a growing focus on sustainability and adaptive reuse of sites like Northgate.

Initially, Hall was drawn to GGLO because of its work in affordable housing. “It’s what attracted me. But what’s kept me here is the variety of the work we’ve done—everything from affordable to market rate to student housing, retail, and office.”

Along with more work in Seattle and Idaho, GGLO is experiencing growth in regions including Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, California, and throughout the West Coast. The reasons are often environmental and sustainability-related. Summers are getting hotter, and wildfires are worsening. Clients are increasingly concerned about air quality and healthy living. Some come to GGLO with knowledge of green design and construction, and some learn from GGLO staff about the benefits of incorporating energy-efficient designs and materials to reduce their carbon footprint and create structures which are not only aesthetically pleasing, but built to last.

“More than half of our clients are repeat clients, people we’ve been working with for quite a long time,” Hall explains. “But we also try to share our expertise at conferences and events, publishing information and stories, which helps draw new clients, finding people who align with our values and our culture. This includes suitability values, mixed-use/mixed-income values, and moving those things forward.”

Additionally, GGLO explores different sustainability initiatives and programs, including LEED, Living Building, and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Framework for Design Excellence. With its 10 principles, “the framework informs progress toward a zero-carbon, healthy, just, resilient, and equitable built environment,” says the AIA.

Customers are also increasingly interested in HVAC and other energy-efficient filtration and cooling systems. “We focus on what the benefits are, whether it’s saving utility costs, lower maintenance, or a more durable building which is going to last them longer,” says Hall. “It’s not so much about the plaque as it is about the real, direct benefits they get out of doing something more sustainably.”

Clients are increasingly choosing more durable products, such as wood flooring instead of vinyl, solid cabinets instead of laminates. These materials require less maintenance and will last decades rather than years. This is especially valuable because so many of GGLO’s clients are long-term property holders, local non-profit and for-profit housing developers, Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) companies, and family residential outfits, such as AMLI Residential and Vivmark Residential.

“While first cost is important, they recognize long-term maintenance and operation costs are also important, and they want to make sure they’re not spending a little upfront but too much down the road,” says Hall.

Transformative community projects
Over the years, GGLO has amassed a portfolio of unique projects, many concerned with repurposing existing land and buildings to meet future needs. In addition to its role in Seattle’s Northgate development, GGLO has been instrumental in the Spring District in Bellevue, Washington.

In an area known as the “Bel-Red Corridor,” the Spring District is moving away from its past as an industrial area into a reimagined urban neighborhood. To date, GGLO has been involved in the design of several area projects, including informing the urban planning, three market rate residential communities, one affordable housing community, and a brewpub/office complex for the local tech workforce. “It’s another large series of developments,” says Hall. Other companies have constructed additional office and residential buildings in the area, near the Meta (Facebook) campus.

The Spring District is located on the light rail line which has recently expanded to Bellevue and Redmond on Seattle’s east side. The new transit line connects to Seattle and Northgate Station as well as south to SeaTac Airport and the City of Lynnwood to the north of Seattle.

“It’s a whole new neighborhood which sprung out of what used to be warehouses and distribution centers,” Hall adds, “but now, it’s a real mixed-use/mixed income neighborhood.” As a long-term project which began in 2012, Hall estimates the developments may require GGLO’s involvement for another 20 years or more.

Another source of pride for the firm is the Schoolhouse District. Located in Woodinville, Washington, the Schoolhouse District is a mixed-use, multifamily development which includes a local historic site. It also highlights the success of a private-public partnership.

Blending past charm with modern amenities—and without releasing some of the embedded carbon of the area’s original structures—GGLO helped create a dynamic neighborhood with living spaces, restaurants, a farmers market, sports fields, a daycare center, retail shops, and Wine Walk Row.

The original site included an underutilized 1970s masonry school and an abandoned 1930s-era schoolhouse. The project team repurposed some of the existing structures to preserve the local history of the site and create a catalyst for a new neighborhood. Artwork featuring reclaimed items from the historic schoolhouse is integrated throughout the buildings as a nod to the site’s heritage as well as the custom mural in the lobby which showcases the evolution of Woodinville through chalk art. A new market rate housing development adjacent to the existing playfields provides 264 homes for families in this community northeast of Seattle.

As with many other projects, the Schoolhouse District saw GGLO receive awards, including the CREDAWA Mixed-Use Development of the Year (2022) and the Multifamily Executive Grand Award: Multifamily Project of the Year (2022).

Building the future
For the team at GGLO, malls, former industrial sites, and land which is underutilized or vacant are all becoming prime candidates for redevelopment. “Affordable housing is going to continue to be a need, and we’re seeing it across the country,” says Hall. The firm is thus presently working on developments in many areas, including Jackson, Wyoming and Sun Valley, Idaho. “I see us continuing to expand across the West. We still have developments in California, as challenging as they are, and in Arizona and Montana. Our work across the West is going to continue,” he shares.

As for the future, Hall believes the office market is changing. Many cities, such as Seattle, still have vacancies in office buildings long after the pandemic, and little new construction. “In the current conditions, a lot of our clients are focusing on renovation and rehabilitation of their projects, rather than new construction,” he says.

“We’ll continue to see this kind of adaptive reuse of office buildings, transforming them into something other than 100 percent office use. Maybe they become residential, maybe retail, but they will become something other than what they are.” GGLO will be there to lead the way, bringing together the visions of both clients and communities.

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The resurgence of bioregionalism comes at a time when climate change and ecological factors are driving greater awareness of the impacts of human habitation on nature and her ecosystems. But there is much more to bioregional architecture than exploring and adapting ancient building methods and design solutions to modern settings.

Rather than a recent concept, bioregional design as a movement has been in development since the 1970s, driven by philosophy and a deep understanding of the place that respect for all life holds in maintaining balance across complex biological systems in both nature and in society. At the time, thought leaders like Peter Berg, Raymond Dasmann, and Gary Snyder—all early pioneers of bioregionalism—pointed out that, to create truly thriving, sustainable communities that live in harmony with nature, urban developers must consider the long-term impact of human habitation on the land, water bodies, air, fauna and flora, and the land itself. In addition to these considerations, settler communities and those who comprise them, alongside Indigenous peoples and their traditions, cultural systems, and livelihoods, should hold equal value in the consideration of conscious, and therefore responsible, placemaking.

Born in 1937, Peter Berg was an environmental activist who first introduced the philosophy of “reinhabitation” (pursuing sustainable living in a single area), while making bioregionalism an accepted concept through his work with Planet Drum Foundation, which he established in San Francisco in 1973. Berg also co-authored a seminal work, Renewable Energy and Bioregions: A New Context For Public Policy published in 1980, where he takes a stand against energy policies being based on political boundaries, calling for ecological boundaries like natural watersheds to become the guiding principle for resource matching and energy planning instead—alongside highlighting the crucial role of balancing human demand for resources with ecological capacity and the cultures interfaced with these systems.

On the other hand, close collaborator, Raymond Dasmann, was a respected wildlife biologist, biogeographer, and conservation ecologist, born in 1919. Together, Berg and Dasmann established a scientific link between human culture and the ecological and geographic spheres within which they naturally exist. Dasmann authored the book A Different Kind of Country, where he discusses the importance of maintaining Indigenous communities, wilderness, and untouched land, juxtaposed with the need for urban renewal and diversifying cities within an ecologically responsible framework.

Berg and Dasmann were joined by Gary Snyder, an ecologist, essayist, and poet who was honoured with the Pulitzer Prize for his anthology, Turtle Island, a collection of poetry encapsulating the ecological, spiritual, and cultural nuances of living in conscious communion with nature in North America. The title was derived from the Indigenous name for the continent, based on First Peoples’ creation histories describing how the continent came into existence on the back of a giant turtle. The trio worked hard to make mainstream society conscious of the importance of practising bioregional design inclusively and from a holistic societal and ecological perspective.

In a 1977 essay, Reinhabiting California, published in The Economist, Raymond and Dasmann referred to those who seek to restore the land and its systems to their original health, provide for their own basic needs from local resources, and in this way dedicate themselves to “living-in-place” as reinhabitants. Reinhabitants, those who understand how to thrive in harmony with nature while returning injured ecosystems to health and living off the land, were contrasted with invaders, those without regard for their impact on the land they inhabit or its living systems beyond that of economic appropriation and exploitation.

While full adoption of the greater idea of bioregional architecture and design in its entirety currently appears comparatively slow, modern construction is increasingly looking at the past—and future—to learn how to harness time-honoured wisdom in modern settings to reduce the impacts of buildings on the environment while providing optimal comfort and function to inhabitants.

Construction developments that incorporate organic, local materials and design solutions best suited to their local geographic, climatic, and other factors while considering their social impact through bioregional architecture can, potentially, change how we inhabit the planet and coexist for good. And interest in the subject seems to be growing.

At present, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Centre for Urban Transformation notes bioregional design as growing in popularity as a result of economic disruption and climate change around the globe, as a means of preserving local cultures through design while adapting to a changing world. Moreover, economic factors follow as the WEF foresees a new marketplace developing from the discipline as climate events and related changes increasingly affect industry, according to its statistics.

With the WEF’s Centre for Urban Transformation noting that over 70 percent of operating costs for businesses are directly related to local conditions, designing buildings that can reduce these figures by working with rather than against local landscapes and changing weather patterns reflects a crucial need for a return to honouring ancestral knowledge alongside modern technologies.

A few recently completed buildings where such aspects were considered stand out. In North America, 2150 Keith Drive in Vancouver, British Columbia is North America’s tallest bioregionally designed and constructed building at 10 storeys high. It is constructed entirely from natural materials. The aim was to optimally reduce the building’s ecological footprint while maximizing building performance. This was achieved in several ways, including rainwater harvesting and the optimal use of daylight.

A report by the WEF states that by replacing concrete with purpose-specific timber, the building’s greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by over 1,600 tonnes. The architecture also replaces the traditional central concrete support system with an innovative building envelope comprising an exoskeleton providing structural support for weight-bearing components.

Further afield, another exciting example of bioregional architecture, design, and construction may soon become a global first amongst the world’s universities. In Africa, the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA) was built by 300 local builders educated in sustainable construction. The project, by MASS in Gashora, Bugesera District is bringing to life a 1,400-hectare, off-grid campus that aims to make itself a carbon-positive facility. Nearly 100 percent of its materials were sourced locally from the natural environment, including local timber, stone, and rammed earth blocks, while water is recycled on the premises. A solar array provides 1.5 megawatts of electricity, and regenerative land practices care for the Earth. The area’s original biodiversity and sensitive wetlands are also being restored in the process.

The World Economic Forum is playing an active role in driving the movement. With harmonious ecological and human exchange now being a guiding factor for its Davos Baukultur Alliance, placing bioregional architecture and construction at the core of its mission for regenerative urban development means that a focus on community well-being and protecting traditional cultures must drive social cohesion in ways that traditional architecture lacked for decades, and too often still does.

As its early proponents noted in the 1970s, bioregionalism cannot be considered as a mere design discipline isolated from its social responsibility. They argued that, due to the humanitarian aspect of how we use, divide, and exploit land and nature, decolonization and bioregionalism must be considered concurrently, as the mindset of colonization informs how Western society designs, how its communities form, and how communities are organized within this context while granting or denying access to natural resources. With the discipline slowly becoming more prominent, it would be encouraging to see these inclusive, ecologically sound values remain a guiding factor in bioregional design around the world as a means of achieving resolution between communities and the ecological systems they inhabit.

The post Establishing Harmony in Chaos<p class="company">Bioregional Architecture and Design</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

Founded in Austin in 1971 by Bailey Elliott, the company incorporated in the early 1990s as Bailey Elliott Construction Incorporated. Scott Wilson and Keith Pool, both longtime project managers and estimators under Elliott, purchased the company from him in 2003 and carried it forward. Years later, the company rebranded as BEC, a change that let it build a distinct identity in Austin’s competitive construction market while continuing to uphold the standards Elliott had established decades earlier.

Keith Pool retired from company management three years ago, and Scott Wilson now owns and leads the business. Today, BEC has 23 employees and a reputation built across Austin’s commercial and multifamily sectors, with a particular niche in low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) construction. As the region has grown, so has demand for the kind of complex, highly technical projects the company has built its name on, and BEC has continued to position itself around exactly that kind of work.

Built on trust
According to Devin Wood, Vice President of Business Development at BEC, that reputation comes down to one thing above all else. “It’s trust,” he says. “Our reputation is the most important thing we have, and that reputation is built on relationships of trust.”

Wood points to the company’s willingness to operate transparently with the owners it works for. Many of BEC’s projects are open-book arrangements, where the company shares its bids and its accounting directly with clients.

“We’re sharing our accounting books with the owners, showing them exactly what we’re costing,” he explains. “We try to be very transparent with owners.” That transparency extends to cost and scheduling updates throughout a project, so owners always know where a job stands. Combined with a track record of finishing jobs on time and under budget—not to mention strong working relationships with architects and consultants—it gives clients the confidence to return to BEC for their next project.

BEC works across a broad range of commercial and multifamily construction, and Wood describes that range as a genuine strength as it lets the company take on projects across many sectors rather than depending on a single market.

That breadth also gives BEC’s teams a wider base of experience to draw on when a project doesn’t fit a conventional mold, which, as Wood tells it, describes a growing share of the company’s work. But within that diversification, BEC has developed deep expertise in a handful of areas, and LIHTC housing sits at the center of that specialization.

LIHTC housing comes with its own layer of governmental regulation, and Wood says success in that market depends on more than technical construction skill. It requires understanding of the communities the housing serves. “Our teams, from estimating to project management to superintendents in the field, understand the communities that we’re serving,” Wood says.

Welcoming a challenge
That expertise is on full display in BEC’s newest and most ambitious undertaking, the Bloom, a seven-story multifamily development that recently broke ground after more than a year and a half of preconstruction work. The project is technically demanding on nearly every level. Its structure combines a three-story concrete podium with four stories of wood-frame construction above, meaning the building has to satisfy Type I construction standards on its lower floors and Type III standards on its upper floors (two different building classifications integrated into a single structure).

The financing behind the Bloom is equally complex, layering multiple funding sources with their accompanying legal and regulatory requirements. The top four floors will provide standard multifamily LIHTC housing. The bottom three floors, though, are something different altogether: specialty housing that will be owned and operated by a foundation serving adults with mental disabilities, replacing outdated facilities the organization currently relies on.

“That’s a really special thing to be able to do,” Wood says. “It’s not just multifamily; this is full-time care. It’s not quite a nursing home, but it’s somewhere in between.”

Adding to the challenge, the Bloom sits on a zero-lot-line site, with construction running from property line to property line with no room to spare. BEC is working on a 26-month schedule, having started construction in June, putting the project roughly two years out from completion.

Collaboration is key
Projects of this complexity, Wood says, are exactly where BEC’s approach sets it apart. He points to a common problem with the traditional design-bid-build process where architects can design a project that fully addresses a site’s complications and an owner’s needs but do so without construction cost input along the way. When the project goes out to bid, the owner can discover it is 20 to 25 percent or more over budget, with no way to value-engineer that much cost out of the design. The result is an expensive, time-consuming redesign bringing new architectural and engineering fees, months of delay, and sometimes even a return trip through the permitting process.

BEC prefers to get involved from the earliest stages of a project, sometimes starting with little more than a single sketch of a proposed building. Drawing on its construction history and strong subcontractor relationships, the company can put together a detailed and accurate cost estimate at that early stage, then continue refining pricing alongside the architect and owner as the design develops.

“We don’t want to do the architect’s job, but we’re there to help them,” Wood says. “We’re there to make suggestions that could keep a project on budget, suggestions that are maybe different design-wise than what they had originally intended but allow the project to keep the design intent and stay on budget.”

Leading the sustainability charge
BEC has spent nearly two decades at the leading edge of sustainable construction, and Wood sees that focus as a long-term investment rather than a passing trend. His reasoning is straightforward: the high-performance, energy-efficient buildings of today tend to become the standard building code of tomorrow, so staying ahead of the curve now pays off for owners and for BEC alike.

Wood has personally worked on LEED-certified projects since 2007, when the certification was still a rarity in the industry. He notes how far standards have shifted since then: work that once qualified as advanced green building under LEED has now largely become standard building code. That shift matters to the owners who plan to hold their buildings for the long term, since they tend to care most about lifetime energy costs and long-term value, both of which green building programs are designed to protect.

That long track record gives BEC’s clients two distinct advantages, Wood says. As a LEED Accredited Professional, he can walk owners through the real costs of pursuing a given certification level based on the company’s own project history and connect them with past clients who can speak to the long-term energy savings those investments produced.

On the construction side, BEC’s project teams, many of them LEED AP or LEED Green Associate certified, are well versed in the additional documentation LEED projects require, from tracking recycled material content to managing waste and recycling submittals.

Among BEC’s sustainable projects, one that stands out to Wood personally is the Lakeline Learning Center, a net-zero-energy building certified under the Living Building Challenge, a standard considerably more rigorous than LEED. Wood believes it remains the only Living Building Challenge project in Central Texas, and he served as project manager on the build.

“It was a major challenge to do that project,” he says. “It took a lot of effort to do it. To this day, it’s still one of my favorite projects to have been involved in, just because of the immense challenge that it was to bring that project to fruition.”

Embracing the future
Now, technology is reshaping how BEC and the rest of the construction industry operate, and Wood expects that shift to accelerate. The company is already exploring artificial intelligence tools for tasks like data parsing and comparing subcontractor quotes, processes that have traditionally required significant manual work.

Wood doesn’t expect AI to touch the work happening on job sites as the technology already in use for grading and site work isn’t likely to change dramatically. What he does expect to change is the administrative side of the business, compliance tracking, and submittals over the next two to five years.

“It’s going to make us more effective and make us more accurate,” he says of automation’s growing role in project management. “We’re going to see fewer mistakes through the process, and it definitely makes all teams more accurate and more efficient.”

Investing in people remains just as important to BEC’s future as investing in new technology, and the company is preparing to launch a more structured internship and apprenticeship program next summer, after running a brief internship effort in the past. With an aging workforce across the industry, Wood sees bringing in new talent from area colleges as essential to the company’s long-term strength, and BEC has already begun recruiting on local campuses.

Of course, safety runs through every part of the BEC culture as well. Rather than relying on a specific safety platform, the team works with a safety consultant who regularly inspects the company’s job sites and focuses on building a positive safety culture from the top down, rather than simply enforcing rules from the outside. “We want every single person that shows up to work on our job site to go home safely to their families,” Wood says. “That’s the goal every single day, and we take it very, very seriously.”

For Wood, everything BEC does traces back to the same idea that construction is fundamentally a relationship business. The company’s plans for growth center on strengthening the ties it already has with clients, subcontractors, and design partners, while building new relationships on the same foundation of trust and reliability.

That extends to how BEC thinks about leadership within the company. Wood believes the construction industry is evolving too quickly for anyone, individually or organizationally, to stand still. “We try to foster a culture at BEC of constantly learning,” he shares. “The day you stop learning is the day that you’re left behind. If you want to be a leader in the industry, whether that’s an individual leader on a job site or in a leadership role in a company, you have to be willing to stay at the forefront and constantly be learning.”

More than five decades after Bailey Elliott founded the company, BEC continues to carry forward the standards he set in careful, transparent work built on relationships that last well beyond a single project.

With the Bloom underway, a growing internship program on the horizon, and a widening embrace of new technology, BEC is positioning itself for its next chapter the same way it built its first: through steady, trusted work, one project at a time.

The post More Than a Building<p class="company">BEC Austin</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.