Firms in the News

Indoor Practice Facility underway in Boise

Weather will no longer hamper Boise State field athletes as construction commences on a new indoor practice facility. The Jackson Hole Landscape design firm VLA is among the winners of the ASLA's first awards for residential landscape design. The firm was recognized for the work done for Big-D Signature.

GEM Buildings Has Boise State Broncos Covered

GEM Buildings began design on the 100,000-sq ft. indoor practice facility at Boise State University in July, and the building is scheduled for completion mid-December 2005.

The team includes Hummel Architects, McAlvain Construction, Hansen-Rice and GEM. "In addition to our competitive price, we figured out a way to meet all of Boise State's requirements and also provide them with the barrel roof they wanted, while improving scheduled completion by several weeks" said Dan Bell, the vice president of GEM Buildings.

GEM was faced with fabricating 220 foot girders within a very tight schedule. "We started designing during the estimating phase," project manager Ivan Gomez said. And by the time we were awarded the project, we were ordering steel and preparing the girder jigs. Fabrication started within two weeks. Whatever our clients need, we'll do it."

Designing a block style building with a great utility factor would have been easy, but ultimately this building will be used for more than just football practice, and GEM wanted it to stand out on campus for that reason.

GEM is projecting the building to be done ahead of schedule and is taking proactive steps right now to assure glitches are avoided. They recently did a test fitting of one of the 220 foot steel spans by erecting the span in one piece at GEM's corporate headquarters. This test was to ensure the piece was liftable and that the engineering and detailing were a perfect fit. The sheer size of this project, with a 35 foot clear height at the sides and 75 foot clear height at the center, makes a proactive approach imperative.

BSU awarded the building contract to GEM, the primary supplier to Hansen-Rice, Inc, after an extensive score card judging process. GEM, along with two other finalists, passed the first round of prequalifications and was then judged on its ability to meet both required needs for BSU as well as extra requests.

The BSU Indoor Practice Facility is "one of those projects you don't do everyday," Bell said. "We're all excited and very involved in this particular project - we've all had an adrenaline rush." Maybe that excitement will spread throughout campus as the Bronco's begin next football season in a facility that is sure to be a touchdown."

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