Mortenson
Specialty: Commercial preconstruction, construction and consulting services
Division manager:C David Mortenson, vice president
Year founded:C 1954, Bellevue office 1982
Headquarters: CMinneapolis
2004 revenues: C$211 million (Bellevue office)
Projected 2005 revenues:C $190 million
Current significant projects:C Snohomish County campus redevelopment, V.A. Skilled Nursing Facility south of Bremerton, UW Research and Technology Building in Seattle
Benson |
Rodger Benson has seen the future and thinks it is “da bomb.” M.A. Mortenson Co.’s director of project development said that DBOM — design, build, operate and maintain — projects are the wave of the future, even if they are a big shift for most firms.
Mortenson is building the University of Washington’s Research and Technology Building under a DBOM contract. Benson said he is aware of only one DBOM project completed or under way in the Puget Sound region — Seattle Public Utilities’ Cedar Water Treatment Facility, completed by CH2M Hill last year.
“It’s probably the biggest new trend that we’re going to be dealing with,” Benson said of DBOMs, which are more prevalent in Canada and Europe.
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Mortenson has taken on the costs of running the UW building for 30 years.
With one team responsible for a building’s costs for decades, the incentive is created to design better buildings, according to Benson. Without that incentive, owners often get structures that are cheap up front but costly over the life of the building. “Now they’re living with buildings that are energy gluttons that have really created a lot of problems,” Benson said.
One problem that Mortenson is facing is the high risk of being sued in its high-rise residential market, a problem that condominium developers have faced for years. Benson said development teams have to build extraordinary insurance premiums into the cost of condo projects.
For Mortenson’s Bellevue office, 2004 was an exceptional revenue year, though sales were “a bit off,” Benson said. But in 2005, with an upturn in the economy and the health care and higher education markets, “we can’t keep up with the opportunities that walk in through our door.”