Shingobee Builders has been honored by Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) as an Eagle Winner, the highest award in ABC’s National Excellence in Construction Awards competition, for our work on Four Winds Alternative & Career Technology Education High School in Fort Totten, North Dakota.
The project also received a special recognition, a Greener Tomorrow Award, for its utilization of sustainability best practices.
Shingobee Vice President Tony Godlewski and Superintendent Eric George received the awards March 27, 2019, during the 29th annual Excellence in Construction Awards celebration in Long Beach, California.
Shingobee completed the Four Winds Alternative / CTE School in August 2017 for the Fort Totten School District, a public-school district located on the Spirit Lake Reservation in Fort Totten, North Dakota. Shingobee’s team worked closely with the project’s designers to deliver the 12,500 square foot educational facility within a stringent budget, funded by an emergency construction grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Impact Aid Discretionary Program.
The school’s Alternative / CTE program expands the educational experience for Four Winds students by offering alternative programs in science, math, English, and social studies along with career technology programs. The building includes classrooms, lab space, offices, and support areas.
The building was designed and built to be net-zero energy, the first school of its kind on tribal land. The features of the building that contribute to its energy efficiency include specially insulated, high R-value walls and roof; triple-pane, Low-E glass windows; an 80 Kw array of photovoltaic (solar) panels; geothermal heating and cooling system with high-efficiency water-to-air heat pumps, variable-speed fans and pumps, and energy recovery system; occupancy sensors for lighting; and solar tubes for day-lighting.
A net-zero facility is an energy-efficient building that produces more energy than it consumes each year. The building has been registered for Zero Energy Certification with the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). ABC’s Greener Tomorrow Award recognizes Shingobee’s involvement in obtaining a net-zero energy building by researching and evaluating different building components that contributed to energy reduction.
ABC’s National Excellence in Construction program has become the premier competition within the construction industry that recognizes outstanding construction projects across the nation. The award honors the skill and creativity of the entire team—contractor, owner, architect and engineer—responsible for an outstanding merit shop construction project. The winning projects, selected from entries submitted from across the country, were judged on complexity, attractiveness, unique challenges overcome, completion time, workmanship, innovation, safety, and cost. This honor recognizes Shingobee as having one of the most innovative and high-quality merit shop construction projects nationwide.
Key project partners included Fort Totten Public School District, the Spirit Lake Tribe, DSGW Architects, Obermiller Nelson Engineering, Bergstrom Electric, Concrete Inc., Klemetsrud Plumbing.