Engineering News Record (ENR), a weekly magazine that covers the worldwide construction industry from its New York City headquarters, has selected R&O Construction of Ogden as its Contractor of the Year for the Intermountain Region. The region consists of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Each year, ENR’s national editorial team nominates and votes on a contractor based on exceptional projects, capabilities, initiatives, community engagement, sustainable building and reputation.
R&O President Slade Opheikens responded to the award: “This award recognizes the extra effort and commitment each of our employees makes on a daily basis to ensure that our clients, our subcontractors and our projects are taken care of. This award recognizes and reinforces that focusing on relationships and our commitment to them is more important than being the largest or most well-known contractor. I want to thank each of our employees for their hard work. I want to thank each of our clients for the opportunities we have been blessed with. It is also crucial that I thank our subcontractors for being our partners on so many incredible projects.”
With projects across the western United States, R&O has office locations in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas in addition to its Ogden headquarters. The firm specializes in municipal buildings, hospitality, senior-care buildings, manufacturing facilities, offices, retail, renovations and remodels, mixed-use developments and higher-education buildings. The company will celebrate its 40th anniversary in January.
“R&O also is a statewide leader in sustainable projects and has achieved 100 percent LEED accreditation for its project engineers,” ENR said in announcing the award.
ENR cited four of R&O current projects as examples of the company’s excellence. They include a $90 million on-campus housing project at Utah Valley University; the Computer and Automotive Engineering Building at Weber State University; the 50,000-square-foot Kearns Library; and the Prospector mixed-use development in Park City, the first project in Utah to use structural cross-laminated timbers.
ENR said it will do a feature-length profile of R&O in its August issue.