Cabela?s, an outdoor sports retailer, is one of Kraus-Anderson?s repeat clients.

Premier Business Partners:

Northland Concrete and Masonry Veit & Co.

The green building movement has been one of the biggest changes to hit the construction industry in the past decade. However, while most contractors are only now taking notice of the trend, Minneapolis-based Kraus-Anderson Construction (KA) has been involved in sustainable building for decades.

“When you look at our history, you realize that the concept of salvaging and reusing materials has been around a long time,” says Senior Vice President of Business Development John Campobasso. “We built our St. Paul office using largely recycled materials back in 1949.” At that time it wasn’t as much out of a concern for the planet, as it was a concern for efficiency and economy.

As environmental awareness evolved in the 1970s and 1980s, KA officially joined the green movement, building energy-saving projects such as Control Data Corporate Energy Center in St. Paul’s Energy Park. The project, which incorporated solar panels and a geothermal heating and cooling system, won a national award for innovation in 1984. Since then, KA has been on the leading-edge for green in Minnesota.

“It just makes sense,” Campobasso says. “Even the recycling of waste materials on job sites – that’s something that we started doing earlier on, but now is part of the LEED process.”

KA built the first LEED-certified project in the state – Westwood Elementary School in Elk River, Minn. The company also built a pilot project for the Green Institute in Minneapolis in 2000, for which it won an Earth Day award for energy conservation and environmentally friendly construction. “We’ve been a leader in sustainable construction, and it’s a trend that today most owners are looking at incorporating into their buildings,” Campobasso says.

Today, interest in green construction spans virtually every product type KA services, says Campobasso. KA’s recent LEED projects include a research and development venue for Boston Scientific, a manufacturing/warehouse facility for Quality Bicycle Products and an office building for Vanguard Group.

Quick Response
KA’s impressive record of sustainable construction grows out of a deeply-rooted commitment to customer service, Campobasso says. “We empower project managers to make sure that they’re responsive to our clients,” he says.

To that end, KA’s structure is fairly flat, without many layers of management that decisions have to travel through before taking effect. “We don’t have a real high food chain that everyone has to move up,” he says. “[Managers] can move quickly, respond quickly.”

The company also stresses close collaboration with owners at the front-end of the process. The KA team provides analyses of schedules, budgets, labor availability and other constructability factors to the owner, allowing for highly informed decisions leading to a successful process for all involved. “That’s what our skill set is, that early planning process,” Campobasso says.

Maintaining that skill set requires continual attention. One of the company’s biggest challenges right now is finding the people who will be part of the KA team in the future, Campobasso says. He says the company is reaching out to technical colleges to let students know about opportunities in the construction industry. “As the work force changes, it’s getting older, and we need to bring in different population sectors than we have in the past,” Campobasso says.