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S/L/A/M Construction Services Honored with DBIA New England Design-Build Award

  • 12/22/14

Glastonbury, Conn. S/L/A/M Construction Services (SLAM) was recently honored with a 2014 Project Team Award from the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) New England Region in the Building Construction category for its work on Hoerle Hall at Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. This is the team’s second award for this project. Associated Builders and Contractors of Connecticut (ABC) honored the team last year with an Excellence in Construction Award and People’s Choice Award.

“Successful project delivery requires a unified team, vision and planning,” said Eugene Torone, project executive for S/L/A/M Construction Services, who accepted the award for the SLAM project team. “Design-build is our preferred method of construction as it results in a single source of responsibility and streamlines the entire project from inception to completion.”

Despite forces of nature — two lightning strikes, two floods, a hurricane, a blizzard and the threat of confronting the protected Timber rattle snake — the entire SLAM team, including construction manager, architect, engineer and subcontractors continued to work. Torone attributes the success of the project to a client relationship built over many years, how the team was structured, and its ability to quickly respond to multiple challenges, which also included a jobsite with limited access and serious soil, flooding and load-bearing capacity issues. Nevertheless, this project was completed 2.5 months ahead of schedule and $828,000 under budget.

The $11.5M project was both designed and built by The S/LA/M Collaborative. Hoerle Hall is a new 35,000 square-foot dormitory and academic building, housing eighty students and five faculty families. In addition to bright and homey living and community spaces, the Georgian-style building provides studios and classroom space, doubling the space for the Art Department on campus. A multi-purpose room adjoins the art studios, digital imaging lab and a darkroom at the south end of the lower level. The multi-purpose room also provides multimedia capabilities for lectures, seminars, classes and clubs to gather in an open and flexible space overlooking the club fields. The winners were announced at the DBIA New England Annual Meeting in Framingham, Massachusetts on Thursday, December 11, 2014.

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