Energy developments, such as wind turbine projects, have been a boon to the Rocky Mountain region.

The sustaining factor for the construction industry today is a booming nonresidential sector. In the Rocky Mountain region, nonresidential and nonstructural building have been heavily supported by new development in the energy, institutional and heavy highway segments.

Montana General Contractor’s Association Executive Director Cary Herenberger has seen its members benefit from the robust work in the highway and street construction segment for years. “Historically, over the last decade or so, our members have been doing state highway work and federal aid highway work,” Herenberger notes.

The association represents professionals in the commercial and industrial sectors. “We have close to 200 supplier members who range from design firms to asphalt and cement producers to building companies and specialty contractors,” Herenberger says. About 60 percent of its members are employed in the heavy highway sector and 40 percent in commercial building, he says. 

State budget cuts, along with escalating construction costs have thinned the number of available highway contracts, leading many to contract with private developers. “We’ve been fortunate in Montana that there has been a sizeable boom in the commercial sector, so they’ve remained relatively busy paving retail parking lots,” Herenberger says. “For the short-term, it looks to be a pretty healthy market throughout most of the state.”

Supporting Herenberger’s optimism is strong employment growth in the industry in the last three years. “Construction employment has grown at a rate that leads any other sector in the state,” he says. “Construction has been extremely healthy and kind of diversified the state’s economy in the past several years.”

An increase in big-box development in central Montana “has taken up a lot of slack for the highway program,” Herenberger claims. Yet, he feels the state has untapped potential in energy development that developers and the state government have yet to take advantage of. “There is a huge potential in parts of our state for energy development, but we have not seen the kind of construction boom associated with it,” he notes. “Montana’s environmental and regulatory environment is not conducive to energy companies investing large sums of capital here, so they go to other states,” he says.

What’s in the Pipeline
Major energy developments in parts of Wyoming have been a boon to the Rocky Mountain region. In response to the region’s long-term and growing energy needs, electric utility Rocky Mountain Power, the Salt Lake City division of PacifiCorp, recently proposed to use a section of a restored surface coal mine as part of a 99-megawatt wind project in 2008. The utility plans to place 66 wind turbines on the proposed 14,000-acre project site in Glenrock, Wyo. It hopes to complete the project in fall 2008. The U.S. Department of Energy lists Wyoming as one of the best states for wind power generation based on wind frequency, the company says.

In early August, PacifiCorp also teamed with the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, National Grid and the Arizona Public Service Co., to bring new transmission lines to the Rocky Mountain and Desert Southwest regions. The announcement is aligned with the company’s intent to construct roughly 1,200 miles of new 500-kilovolt transmission lines by 2014.

Developing for the Future
Commercial construction activity is robust in other parts of the region, Utah in particular. Utah’s Division of Facilities and Construction Management (DFCM), has more than $1 billion worth of capital development projects in the works, with an additional $300 million slated for capital improvement projects, says Robert Franson, manager of construction services. The division is responsible for administering the design and construction of all state projects exceeding $100,000.

According to Franson, the construction climate in the state “has been a very dynamic one” in recent years, although the region, like others, is affected by material inflation, sometimes as high as 25 percent in the past two years. 

Both large and long-term projects at the University of Utah, Utah State and smaller colleges have dominated the construction scene in recent years. Projects range from hospital expansions to repairs intended to keep the campus facilities cutting-edge.

Long-term projects for the division include a $77 million renovation of the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. The project is designed to improve the seismic stability, as well as bring the center’s technology into the 21st century. Construction began in June 2005 and is expected to be completed in mid-2008. Funding for the project came from public and private sources.

Working with construction manager Oakland Construction, the library will include an automated storage and retrieval system, eight high-tech classrooms and a technology center. DFCM project manager Lyle Knudsen says campus construction has accelerated significantly in the last five years. “They are expanding like gangbusters up there,” he says.

Further investment in Utah’s educational infrastructure will continue to surge in coming years. One project the division will deal with in coming years is USTAR, or Utah’s Science Technology and Research initiative, which state legislators passed in 2006 as a strategic investments in the University of Utah and Utah State University. This investment is intended to leverage the universities to attract high-tech, growth businesses that will eventually lead to an expansion of the state’s tax base.

A large percentage of USTAR funding will support construction of a state-of-the-art research facility at each campus. Each structure will aid researchers with the resources necessary to advance in several focus areas including biofuels, biomedical innovation, diagnostic imaging, nanotech development and personalized medicine.