Sukut’s environmental division helps cleanup fire ravaged areas in Southern California.

Sukut Construction, based in Santa Ana, Calif., has begun the demolition and removal of more than 500 homes that were ruined in wildfires that devastated San Bernardino and other Southern California counties last fall. Under a $19.6 million contract awarded by San Bernardino County, the company’s wildfire clean-up team will concentrate on homes in four mountain neighborhoods: Grass Valley/Crab Flats, Running Springs, Green Valley Lake and the Fredalba/Smiley Park area.

Rather than leave the cleanup to individual homeowners, San Bernardino chose to coordinate the work on a regional basis under a model developed by Sukut and other contractors following the 2007 fire in Lake Tahoe. Sukut and its subcontractors anticipate it will take about two to three days to tackle each home.

In addition, they anticipate hauling up to 150 truckloads of debris per day, which will be recycled after any hazardous waste has been removed. “Our priority is to keep the groundwater and lake free from contamination and residents safe from potentially toxic materials,” said Dave Grattan, president of Sukut’s environmental division.

Denver-based design, development and construction firm Aardex LLC received LEED Platinum certification for the Signature Centre at Denver West. This is its first commercial Platinum building, Aardex says. At 186,000 square feet, it is the largest speculative LEED Platinum project in the United States, the company adds. “We received the Platinum certification and the staff achieved it at standard construction costs,” CEO Rick Butler said. “We can do LEED for free.”

University Mechanical & Engineer Contractors, a subsidiary of Norwalk, Conn.-based EMCOR Group Inc., was awarded a contract to provide mechanical construction services for a new 24-million-gallon-per-day (MGD) water treatment plant in Gilbert, Ariz. The plant will have an expansion capacity of 48 MGD and utilize ballasted flocculation with a standard filtration treatment process.

San Francisco-based URS Corp. began construction on the largest highway project in Missouri history and the first design/build project for the Missouri DOT. The $535 million project will entail reconstructing 10 miles of I-64, a six-lane major east-west arterial in the St. Louis metropolitan area, which connects downtown with the western suburbs.

In a joint venture with San Diego-based The Kleinfelder Group Inc. and Oakland, Calif.-based Geomatrix Consultants Inc., URS was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct the investigation, evaluation and seismic safety improvement design of the Lake Isabella main and auxiliary dams in Kern County, Calif. Construction will begin in 2011 and is expected to finish in 2015.