Jacobsen Construction Continues at USU

Jacobsen Construction has been retained as the Construction Manager / General Contractor for the new Utah State University (USU) College of Agriculture Building in Logan.

Utah's DFCM (Division of Facilities and Construction Management) announced the Jacobsen award on the $35 million, 110,000 gross square foot construction project on Monday, November 02, 2009. The announcement came following a Value Based Selection process that had involved four of the state's major contractors.

The award will initially cover the pre-construction efforts to carry the team through May of next year, when actual construction will begin. Pending project funding by the Utah Legislature in their coming 2010 Session, this project promises to be another feather in Utah's regional agricultural leadership cap.

The new building is key in USU's focus in further developing the science of Agriculture here at home and abroad. Taking its prominent position on USU's "Quad," the building will provide the classrooms and research laboratories needed to extend the college's reputation as a regional agricultural economic engine - a position USU has held for decades. Early in the 1900s , John A. Widtsoe then professor and later president of the Agricultural College, pioneered grain dry farming on the campus. His concepts are now practiced around the world. Similar advancements in many agricultural sciences have won USU its world-wide reputation.

John Fortuna, project executive, Ash Buchanan, pre-construction team leader, and Shaun Robbins, project estimator, make up the Jacobsen project leadership team. Uniquely, all three are LEED AP certified. DFCM has set LEED Silver qualification as its target for all state construction projects. It is unusual that all three project leaders on the Jacobsen pre-construction team would be LEED AP certified, and appropriate that they are all at work on this important "greenest" of all the state's buildings.