DPR Construction’s core markets include healthcare, biopharmaceutical and offices, as well as data centers and sound stages.

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To truly understand DPR Construction ’s culture, one must know its history first. The company was founded in 1990 by Doug Woods, Peter Nosler and Ron Davidowski – the D, the P and the R – “to do something different in an industry traditionally resistant to change,” the company says.

“At the time, most people thought of construction as more like a manufacturing-type business,” Nosler says. “It’s not; it’s a service business.”

“When we started DPR, we wanted to be a customer-focused organization,” Woods says. “We’re not a hard bid general contractor; we’re a negotiating general contractor that takes care of our customers. To do that, we need great people who are happy and willing to work hard. That’s one of the things that made us different from the beginning.”

“Our distinct purpose of building great things and the core values we dialed in on – integrity, enjoyment, uniqueness and ever-forward – emulate the way we like to work,” Davidowski adds. “We like to live and transcend into the way we do business, again, doing something different in an industry that has not always had a reputation for integrity and doing things right the first time.”

Maintaining this ideal has helped the Redwood City, Calif.-based, company to grow quickly.

DPR has 11 offices, with six residing in its home state, and the other five in Phoenix; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Orlando, Fla.; and Falls Church, Va. “This year, we’ll do $1.6 billion worth of construction nationwide,” Southern California Regional Manager Jim Washburn says.

“We attribute that growth and development to the culture of DPR and how different we are from other contractors,” he explains. “When we say a project will be done at a certain time, it will be done at that time. If we say it’s going to be done for a certain amount of money, it will be; we don’t want change orders.

“Lastly, we try to be innovative and take a different approach to the modeling of projects, as well as an environmentally-sensitive approach.”

Embracing BIM
DPR has embraced building information modeling (BIM), Washburn says. “We have a BIM room in each of our offices and three smart boards where we put up mechanical, electrical and plumbing drawings, overlay them and look for conflicts,” he explains. “BIM helps the team visualize what the project is going to look like. We use it in a variety of ways to help coordinate things before we actually start the field process.”

He says BIM is often helpful in the collaborative process between the owner, the architect and the contractor.

“All three are part of the same contract and they all want to make the project successful,” he points out. “And, they want to do it in a more efficient manner. BIM helps the team better visualize the project, particularly for adjacency between spaces and what the end-result will look like before we actually build it.

“We set ourselves apart by being more collaborative than other contractors and try to be more focused on the customer,” Washburn continues.

“We tailor our services to what the customer wants. We’re more progressive than other contractors in that we want to offer ideas to help the design along, so the design can hit the budget and hit the schedule. Whoever is paying the bill can figure out what the objectives are and we’ll use that as our standard of what we’re trying to achieve as a group. We keep a positive attitude and want to be a breath of fresh air for the construction industry.

“I think that helps with the interaction between the owner, architect and the contractor and keeps the spirit of the people that are involved with the project alive,” he adds.

Loving LEED
DPR also has expertise in helping clients obtain LEED certification. “We’ve been into the environmental focus of construction for quite a while,” Washburn notes. “So far, more than 180 of our people have taken the LEED test and have passed, so it’s a big focus of ours to have our employees on the leading-edge. We see that as a tool in our toolbox and try to incorporate green building into the process as much as possible.

“A lot of sustainable practices can be done without spending any money in just how we recycle our waste or find material within 500 miles of any project,” he adds.

“We often try to figure out how to introduce water back into the landscaping and use a better glazing or reflecting roof, whether or not a project seeks LEED certification.”

Technically Challenging
DPR Construction’s core markets include healthcare, biopharmaceutical, office buildings and technical projects such as data centers and sound stages. In March, the company completed a $7.5 million nanotechnology project called Kavli Research Institute Cleanroom for the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena, Calif. “That was a tricky one,” Washburn recalls.

“It was small as far as square footage – just 10,000 square feet – so space coordination was a big issue.

“It’s a five-story building, but we were working in the basement. The new mechanical units were up on the roof, so we had to figure out how to get the air system down from that level, as well as through the entire building. There was air coming in and exhaust coming out, and we had to change the fire alarm and elevator systems for the building.”

The biggest challenge was achieving a Class 1 cleanroom status, he adds. “Cleanrooms have a lot of air requirements and trying to work in a fairly small space in the lowest level of a building is not easy,” Washburn says. “Certainly on a construction and coordination side, it was not an ideal location, but we were determined to help Cal Tech in their desire to push forward on their nanotech research and development. Microelectronics was big in the country prior to 2001, which was when a lot of cleanrooms – chip manufacturers – went overseas. However, we utilized experience that we gained in the early 1990s and applied it to the Cal Tech project.”

In the early 1990s, “We wanted to be in technical construction,” Davidowski remembers. “We did not want to be a commodity, but establish a niche to distinguish ourselves from other contractors.” One of DPR’s first technical jobs was a $43 million water fabrication project in Los Angeles for Rockwell International in 1994. DPR’s tasks included building 17,500 square feet of Class 1 cleanrooms, upgrading the existing central plant, installing specialty and bulk gas systems and constructing a new bulk chemical building. DPR delivered the project in just four-and-a-half months.

In the Year 2030
DPR started its first year with 11 employees and a lot of ambition. “To say we wanted to become a truly great construction company by the year 2000 was like a three-year-old saying, ‘I want to graduate from college by the time I’m 10,’” Woods says. “We do set high goals, but with the people we have in place, we know we can reach every one of them.”

Now, DPR’s mission is to be one of the most admired companies by the year 2030. “We’ve taken out the word ‘construction’ because we want to be the most admired company of all companies,” Washburn declares.

“That will be our 40th year in business and all of the original people will be retired or doing something else. So, it’s a transitional statement. It’s also a quality and innovation statement.

“What Toyota did for the automobile industry, we want to work for the construction industry.”

DPR’s culture will get the company there, he adds. “We have an open office philosophy with no walls,” he says. “When [visitors] walk into the office, they don’t know who has been here for the last 17 years or who just started yesterday. We work as a family more so than a business. People get to know each other. We mix so people can understand what the internal customer wants and have a better understanding of the project, and perhaps even change the way we’re doing business to help the customer better.

“We’re fairly horizontal,” he adds. “We don’t have a vice president whose sole purpose is to just walk around to see if people get their work done.

“We’ve gone out of our way to have our management not be that way. We think that’s ineffective and not viewed very well. We want to hire people that don’t need that. If they need that kind of supervision, they should really be working for somebody else.”