KBE Building Corp. Wins CBC’s Project Team of the Year Award for K-12 Schools Category

ROCKY HILL, Conn. — The Connecticut Building Congress has awarded its Project Team of the Year Award to KBE Building Corporation’s project team for Carrington Elementary School. The project was also recognized with a First Place award in the K-12 Schools category.

KBE served as construction manager at risk for the newly built $30-million elementary school located in Waterbury, Connecticut.

“We are thrilled to have won this award from the Connecticut Building Congress,” said KBE owner and CEO Mike Kolakowski, who bought the firm in 2007 with longtime senior executives Eric Brown and Simon Etzel. “K-12 schools has emerged as one of our top markets, and it feels great to be honored for our work within that sector.”

Eligibility for the CBC’s 2014 Project Team of the Year award required a project that exemplified team excellence and represented best practices in teamwork by project owners, architects, engineers, construction managers and trades.

The CBC also considered the following criteria: documented team cooperation/collaboration from conceptual design through project completion (60 percent); the team’s approach to the project’s unique challenges (20 percent); the ability to meet the owner’s budget and schedule constraints (10 percent) and the project’s social, economic or sustainable design considerations (10 percent).

Among the factors that helped drive the project’s selection as an award-winner:

1. Met the City of Waterbury’s objective to create a vital, neighborhood-based school that meets both increasing enrollment needs while maintaining a strong, neighborhood community for students and their families.
2. Overcame the challenges of unexpected rock, blasting, contaminated soils and an extensive sitework requirement—and still met the schedule while maintaining good neighborhood relations.
3. Used BIM technology to effectively communicate with neighbors and correct misperceptions about the school’s “visual dominance” over the neighborhood.
4. Worked creatively with the owner, architect, and State of Connecticut Bureau of School Facilities to accommodate early bid package release in order to meet the schedule changes.
5. Exceeded the city’s local resident and minority/women employment goals, with some long-lasting employment success stories.
6. Brought to life an exceptional building program and architectural design that creates a vibrant learning center, particularly gratifying for students who had been attending the deteriorating, 30-year-old former school.

KBE received the award at CBC’s Project Team and Scholarship Awards Banquet on June 10 in Hartford.

Photos courtesy of Paul Burk Photography.