Texas Construction recently announced its yearly Best of 2010 winners. This annual competition recognizes commercial construction and design excellence from across the state of Texas and State of Oklahoma. The awards were “Best in Category” and “Awards of Excellence.”
Tellepsen Family Downtown YMCA project won the Excellence Green Building Award. It will be a LEED certified facility, pursuing LEED Gold, and will be the 1st YMCA facility to earn LEED certification. The project was submitted by Tellepsen Builders, the General Contractor for the project. The project design team included Kirksey, architect; The Mathis Group, construction manager; Haynes Whaley Associates, structural engineer; and MEP systems were design-built by Piper-Houston Electric, Graves Mechanical, and Raven Mechanical. It is interesting to note that during a 3 year period since 2010, YMCA of Greater Houston completed a series of 15 projects, all managed by The Mathis Group.
With over 124,000 square feet of membership and programming space, Tellepsen Downtown YMCA is the second largest operating facility in the Greater Houston area, serving over 10,000 members, according to Kirksey’s website. It was certainly a great privilege for Haynes Whaley Associates to be a team member in the design of such a prestigious facility for YMCA of Greater Houston.
According to the Texas Construction, more than 180 projects were nominated by numerous builders or contractors. The submitted projects were judged by an independent jury of industry experts in late August and 65 of these were honored with an award. Projects submitted for the competition included a variety of commercial construction categories, located in Texas or Oklahoma, completed in the past year, and, most importantly, did not involve a construction-related fatality. The jury awarded projects based on entry criteria including overcoming challenges and teamwork, safety, innovation and contribution to the industry/community, construction quality and craftsmanship, function, and aesthetic quality of design.
