Manchester, NH On October 24th, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC NH/VT) held its 2019 Excellence in Construction Awards ceremony at the Doubletree Hotel. A/E/C industry professionals from across the region gathered for the annual event, celebrating the industry’s best-of-the-best in multiple award categories. PROCON was recognized for three of its projects: The Assembly Row mixed-use development in Somerville, Mass.; Rand-Whitney Container in Worcester, Mass.; and the Pro Star Aviation hangar in Londonderry, N.H.
The Assembly Row mixed-use development picked up an Excellence in Construction award in the design/build category. In partnership with national REIT firm Federal Realty, PROCON designed and built a 315,000 s/f building composed of The Row 5-star hotel, 122 luxury residences known as the Alloy, and 22,000 s/f of retail space. The project occurred in an extremely busy neighborhood, surrounded by 40 shops, entertainment venues, restaurants, an MBTA station steps away, and non-stop traffic.
PROCON co-president Lance Bennett accepted the award with his project team. “We had a lot of firsts on this project – our first $100 million job, our most complex job ever, and our biggest one to date. It also takes a lot of people to build this type of project.” More than 80 of PROCON’s workforce contributed to one of the highest profile projects in the company’s history. Consequently, The Alloy residences sold out months before the project’s completion at premium market rates. Moreover, The Row Hotel garnered numerous hospitality industry accolades and was ranked 3rd Best Hotel in the U.S. and 44th Best Hotel in the world by Travel & Leisure magazine.
Rand-Whitney won the Excellence in Construction award in the Industrial Manufacturing category. PROCON designed and built a 45,000 s/f expansion with 22 new docks, a shipping/receiving office area, truck storage areas, a dedicated truck-access driveway, and extra trailer storage. Other renovations included the office headquarters building (built in 1965), as well as an adjacent offices across the sprawling campus. All of this was achieved with zero productivity loss for Rand-Whitney.
Senior vice president of operations, Dan Messier, said, “It was a very involved project. We were adjacent to 300,000 s/f of existing space. We had about 120 tractor-trailers accessing the site daily, as well as paper deliveries by train, and alternate shifts working around the clock. We are pleased that it all turned out extremely well and the owner was very happy with the results.”
Pro Star Aviation was recognized in the design-build category with a Merit award. PROCON designed and constructed a 45,000 s/f hangar facility adjacent to a busy airport with 1.85 million passengers per year, and 138 flights per day. Working closely with aviation and local authorities, the team safely completed the project with no disruption to flight protocols. The completed hangar facility included a lobby, personnel offices, conference rooms, and an employee cafeteria. It brought Pro Star’s scattered operations team under one roof, doubled their hangar space and increased production capacity.
The ABC NH/VT Excellence in Construction Awards program is the industry’s leading competition that honors both general and specialty contractors for innovative and high-quality merit shop construction projects. The award honors all construction team members, including the contractor, owner, architect and engineer.
PROCON was also recognized in the second annual Best Practices category – with a Merit award for community service and workforce development. The company provides multiple venues and opportunities for growth and development internally. And within the community, the firm worked with Parkside Middle School to develop a program introducing students to the skills needed and career opportunities in construction trades. Beyond that, the company re-launched the ACE Mentor NH program. ACE pairs mentors with students to learn and develop skills in the A/E/C industry. To team up with ACE and help develop tomorrow’s workforce see: Become an ACE sponsor or mentor.
photo credit: Trayce Gregoire Photography
photo credit: Joe St. Pierre Photography
photo credit: Robert Umenhofer Photography