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Turner Construction has been building in upstate New York for a long time, and the company continues to work on being the contractor of choice for education and institutional projects throughout the region. Vice President and General Manager Mark Breslin says the company’s history in Albany is long and storied, and its Albany office has established it as one of the area’s premier builders. “Turner’s been building in upstate New York since about 1911, and established an office in Albany in 1990,” he says.

The future of the region looks solid, he says, with the high-tech sector flocking there for office space and education continuing to be an important market. “There’s been some significant investment both in the public school market and in the private-sector higher-education facilities,” Breslin says.

As one of the nation’s largest and most comprehensive general contractors, Turner brings powerful resources to the Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse markets. Breslin says the size and scope of Turner has helped the Albany office by giving it access to the expertise and knowledge of other offices. This has been an important factor in helping Turner’s Albany office meet the changing needs of the area, he explains.

“We’re doing a large job right now for GE Healthcare, it’s a digital X-ray facility and it’s got a large clean room component, and we were able to draw upon experience from offices in Atlanta and San Antonio to come in and kick it off,” Breslin says.

“I think the fact that we have national resources that we can draw upon for a specific client’s needs is a strength,” he adds.

In addition, Breslin also credits the strong corporate culture at Turner for its success, stressing its focus on serving clients with integrity. Even as the market’s needs and demands change, and even as the pool of available talent shrinks, Turner is committed to succeeding in upstate New York, Breslin says. Ongoing projects such as the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.; the renovation of State University of New York at Buffalo’s Acheson Hall; and the addition to Crouse Hospital in Syracuse show that commitment remains strong. The company’s embrace of green building principles also demonstrates its intention to remain on the cutting-edge of the industry.

Thinking Greener
The company is also meeting the needs of the market through sustainable building. “A majority of our projects are looking for some form of sustainable construction,” Breslin says. “It’s really changing the way we think about the whole building process.”

Turner has one of the strongest green presences in the regional market, he says, with 20 LEED-accredited professionals in upstate New York. The company also provides revolving study groups to help its engineers prepare for the LEED accreditation test. Breslin says the jump to sustainable building has significantly altered the company’s perception of its role on each project and made it more of a partner with other stakeholders, such as the owner and the architect.

“What it’s forced us to look at is an integrated design process where we get involved at the concept of a project and look at ways we can engage sustainable ideas and concepts,” Breslin says. “It really forces our team to think outside the box.”

The company’s commitment to green building contributed to Operations Manager for Sustainable Construction Michael Deane joining the company. “I would say that they are industry-leading, and I say that because I came to work for Turner to help manage the sustainable construction effort specifically because it was an industry leader,” Deane says.

Sustainable projects made up nearly 20 percent of the company’s total volume last year, according to Deane, and the company has more than 60 LEED-certified projects in its portfolio. “We try to make green practice part of every project we do,” he says.

For example, Breslin says, the company practices recycling on the job site, something that was fairly uncommon as little as five years ago. “On every Turner project, we separate the waste to the greatest extent we can,” he says.
    
Greening its Fleet
Deane says the company is also working to make its fleet of 200 vehicles one of the greenest in the industry. A recent survey of the fleet removed the least-efficient equipment and replaced 25 percent of the total fleet with hybrid vehicles.

Particulate filters and biodiesel fuels are also being tested right now. “What we’d really like to do is deal with carbon emissions on the job site,” Deane says. Turner is a member of the EPA Climate Leaders program, which calls on businesses to publicly disclose and work to reduce their carbon footprints.

“We’re even looking at noise emissions, which is another type of environmental concern,” Deane says. “It doesn’t affect global warming, but it’s definitely a quality-of-life issue.” Off the job site, Turner uses recycled office supplies and motion detectors to prevent lights from being on when no one is in the room. “We have 50 offices around the company and last year we did a survey of all of the energy usage across those offices,” Deane explains. “Now that we know how much electricity we use, we’re working to reduce that.”

Prominent Projects
One of Turner’s most unusual projects underway is the EPMAC facility for Rensselaer Polytechnic University. The $155 million project is a 217,000-square-foot performing arts center with a 400-seat theater, two studios, a radio station and a 1,200-seat concert hall.

What makes EPMAC such an unusual project is how it integrates multimedia into the traditional construction, Breslin says. “It’s a convergence of art and engineering,” Breslin says. Multimedia installations will feature works by various artists. “We’ve done a lot of performing arts venues, but we’ve never done one that incorporated this much virtual and electronic media,” Breslin says.

The Albany office brought in an expert from Turner’s Los Angeles office to help plan the project. “We drew a lot of our national resources,” Breslin adds. The project will be substantially complete by June, he says.

Turner is also providing preconstruction and construction services for the rehab of Acheson Hall at State University of New York at Buffalo. The building, more than 40 years old, is a 148,500-square-foot chemistry laboratory that is being gutted and rehabbed on the exterior. The company says the project will be LEED-certified once completed in 2010.

A four-story addition to Crouse Hos-pital in Syracuse is also on Turner’s docket. This $40 million project will add 64,000 square feet to the existing hospital, including two stories below grade for an infrastructure upgrade. “It’s a substantial mechanical upgrade and the addition of a new surgical suite,” Breslin says. It’s expected to be completed by 2011.

Big educational and institutional projects such as these are the reason Turner feels confident about its future in upstate New York, but Breslin says the company isn’t about to stop looking for new opportunities. “I think there’s going to be continued investment with high-tech companies like GE and IBM, and we’re going to continue to work closely with these companies as they develop,” he says.