Contractor of the Year
Skanska holds firm to core values while expanding its territory

South Central Construction recognizes Skanska USA Building as its 2009 Contractor of the Year, for achievements in business leadership, investment in people, community and industry involvement, leadership and reputation.

Skanska USA Building Inc. constructs large complex structures by using some simple building blocks.

Skanska’s core values – known as the Five Zeros – are how it wants to work with owners, architects and subs on a project with the goal of zero accidents, zero ethical breaches, zero environmental incidents, zero defects and zero loss-making projects.“

The Skanska culture is about doing the right thing,” says Gary Cooper, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA Building in Nashville.

An arm of Sweden-based Skanska AB, Skanska USA Building has its U.S. headquarters in New York run by a chief operating officer who has five co-COOs running regional operations. Cooper reports to one of them.

Skanska is the company where everybody on a jobsite starts every day with “stretch and flex;” where workers are encouraged to stop work if safety is an issue; that goes out into communities to promote diversity; and where education, through Skanska University, takes place on company time.

Skanska is South Central Construction’s 2009 Contractor of the Year, for its achievements in business leadership, investment in people, community and industry involvement, leadership and reputation with industry.

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In her nomination, Trena L. Cooper, sales representative for Williams Scotsman in Memphis, cited Skanska’s work on the replacement hospital at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center.“

As Memphians pass by its daily progress, it gives us a sense of pride and amazement at what Skanska did on the seemingly small footprint that it had to work from,” she writes.

The construction site, in the Memphis medical center complex, is so tight “there could have been a bad working relationship over there,” she says. “They worked well with all of us getting everything laid out and done.”

Cooper also cites Skanska’s environmental commitment.“

Skanska thinks progressively when it comes to sustainable building projects,” she writes. “It’s a pleasure to work with them.,”The two companies have partnered to develop green modular worksite trailers for greener jobsites.

While Skanska’s major work is in health care and transportation, it also serves the education, corporate office, aviation, science and technology, and sports and entertainment markets.

The Nashville office’s biggest projects now under way in this region are a pair of hospitals in Tennessee: the $201-million, 601,000-sq-ft Le Bonheur in Memphis, and the $80-million, 245,000-sq-ft Franklin Woods Community Hospital in Johnson City.“

Gary Cooper, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA Building in Nashville, says Skanska remains committed to its core values – known as the Five Zeros

Skanska helped us keep the project within budget and helped us get the project moving so we could keep on our schedule” by joining the Le Bonheur team during the design phase, says Dave Rosenbaum, vice president of facilities management at the medical center.

Skanska also has experience in building in urban areas where there is no extra space for parking or storage, he says.

The company’s health-care experience and environmental commitment are paying off on this project, Rosenbaum says.

“They know what works and they know what doesn’t work,” he says. “We’re committed to building green at no additional construction costs. So far, we are.”

Skanska also helped find areas to cut costs when needed, he says.

When Nissan North America Inc. announced it would relocate its headquarters from California to Franklin, Tenn., Skanska didn’t call about the construction contract for the $107-million, 460,000-sq-ft building.

Nissan called Skanska and other major firms to come in for reviews before selecting it as construction manager, says Rob Traynham, Nissan director of corporate services.

Nissan uses the cross-functional approach to reaching goals and included its engineering, purchasing and corporate services departments in the selection and building design.“

The Nissan building, completed last year, won the Judges’ Award in Construction during South Central Construction’s Best of 2008 Awards competition.

Skanska was a member of that cross-functional team,” that included architect Gresham Smith & Partners of Nashville as well as the automotive design team that contributed to the building’s exterior design, Traynham says.

Building the five-story parking garage cost more than paving parking lots but keeps the hillside site green, he says.

The Nissan building, completed last year, won the South Central Construction “Best of 2008” award for construction.

The $243-million, 985,000-sq-ft Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee headquarters complex that opened earlier this year in Chattanooga was supervised by Skanska’s Atlanta office. All four buildings in Tennessee are sustainable structures and all but Nissan are pursuing LEED silver or gold certification.

Skanska takes some small jobs, such as the recently completed $4-million medical office building in rural Thompson’s Station, Tenn.Those smaller projects provide good training and experience for young managers on the move up to the corporate headquarters and major hospitals, Cooper says.

Competition always involves the best price and includes staying ahead of technology, he says.

The new technology includes design tools and concepts, such as building information modeling and virtual design construction systems that integrate information from building design and functional systems to increase productivity in design and construction – and to solve what can become time-consuming problems in the field while still in design, Cooper says. More building team members – mechanical, electrical and drywall – are getting involved in projects early, so owners get more integrated delivery, he says.

“We can give the client the best, most cost-effective work,” he says.

More prefabricated components are next, Cooper says.

At a Skanska hospital project in Dayton, Ohio, workers built 150 bathrooms in a warehouse during the winter.

“Once the structure is up and the concrete is poured, it will take four or five days to set them in place,” Cooper says. “It’s more efficient and safer.”

One of the Nashville office’s biggest projects currently under way is the $80-million, 245,000-sq-ft Franklin Woods Community Hospital in Johnson City, Tenn. Photo by Aerial Innovations of Tennessee

Skanska started promoting green buildings five years ago, and Cooper is one of 20 LEED-certified professionals in Skanska’s Nashville office and one of 425 nationally.

It is certified by ISO 14001 adhering to an environmental management system.

As head of a 100-person office, Cooper says the entire firm works as a team, making his job easy.

Many contracts are from prior clients, generating a 70% repeat rate.

And while Skanska managers pursue potential jobs, senior business development director Mendy Mazzo studies each one with the directive, “Make sure you tell us ‘no’ if it doesn’t make sense for us,” Cooper says.

He says his office has enough work under contract now “to keep us busy through the end of 2010.”

Skanska looks for candidates with an engineering or construction management degree along with some work experience. It is providing that this summer for eight interns in Nashville.

It hired James Threalkill as corporate diversity director five years ago, charging him with bringing smaller, women- or minority-owned subcontractors to the jobsite. Skanska’s Building Blocks program, now under way at the Memphis and Dayton jobs, provides these owners with monthly classes on topics like estimating, accounting, marketing and safety.

If Skanska is new to a community, it has outreach meetings with small businesses and may break down contracts into smaller packages so they can qualify for the work, Cooper says.

The company also participates in the communities where it does business.In Nashville, for example, it works with the ACE Mentor Program, helps build for Habitat for Humanity, landscaped a community center and built a playground for a local school it has “adopted.”

In the field, project teams host charity golf tournaments like the one that the Le Bonheur team sponsored, raising $35,000 for the hospital foundation to fund a family waiting area.