Case Studies October 2019

There’s got to be some more “there-there.” Richard A. Yeager laments the phrase, but concedes its wisdom. Especially in his role of the past year as director for campus planning at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. While he’s quick to acknowledge the more than $1.5 billion of capital improvements and new buildings over the past 15 […]

The rewards, at least the tangible ones, were greater in some of his previous posts, but Hector A. Dietsch wanted more out of his professional and personal life. For he had been logging 10- to 12-hour shifts, six, sometimes seven days a week in his native Dominican Republic, supervising high-stakes renovation for construction companies. A […]

To Iga Wyrzykowski, there’s a certain awe that strikes her when she walks through an airport, past one of the XpresSpa stores she’s helped create. “I walk by and think to myself, ‘Wow I designed that!,’” XpresSpa’s director of store design and construction says. “The transformation is amazing. It’s incredible to think that I designed […]

It’s the Cherokee term for “from the woods,” which makes Adohi the ideal name for new student housing scheduled to open late this summer at the University of Arkansas. For it’s the woods where the primary construction material originates, though it was processed in Austria by the Holzpak Corp. One of just a handful of […]

Hurricane Harvey having slammed into Gulf Coast of Texas in late summer of 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency needed a strategic partner—and fast—to help spread word of relief efforts and to alert residents of further danger. Though based in Englewood, Colorado, and having made its mark by establishing contact centers for commercial clients worldwide, […]

The best advice Joel Koffron’s father Arthur gave him about the construction field was to develop technical solutions that had “both a belt and suspenders” so your “pants” won’t fall down and expose your “weaknesses.” Koffron, now the construction manager at Lowell, Massachusetts-based TRC Companies Inc. never forgot the guidance passed down from father to […]

It’s tough to make mud in the desert, as Johnny Little discovered. Such was the case when Little, vice president of live events and global licensing for Tough Mudder Inc. came to Oman to debut the patented obstacle course race that takes place—as the name suggests—in the mud. Except mud is tough to make from […]

You can’t complain too much when the traffic backs up on Interstate 405 between Seal Beach and Costa Mesa. For many of the 16 car-jammed miles, the vistas of wildlife are breathtaking. Well, sort of. The scenes of plants and animals are at once real and imagined, molded and engraved into the concrete walls, dividers […]

You sound like a football coach, Rick Fechter is told during a midsummer interview with Blueprint. The approachable but demanding facilities director of the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, school district takes it as a compliment. He concedes there’s no room for subpar performers on his NFL-sized team of around 45. Especially with the start of the […]

As the campuses of Rutgers University grow and expand throughout New Jersey, school officials hope the locals take notice. It’s certainly hard to miss the new RWJ Barnabas Health Athletic Performance Center, a $108 million complex located at the heart of the school’s Piscataway, New Jersey campus. Encompassing 125,000 square feet, the four-story facility combines […]