National construction company Haskell opened a small office in Salt Lake City in 2018 to better serve its client, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), as it prepares for a wave of new projects.
In a 2021 corporate restructuring, Haskell’s Salt Lake City office was designated as one of three new Regional Operations Centers (ROCs), along with Dallas and Jacksonville, Florida, and today covers projects located between Dallas and California , focused mainly on water and wastewater, manufacturing, and religious and cultural projects. These key moves positioned the contractor to take on a wider range of delivery methods and projects, but with a continued emphasis on “collaborative delivery,” says Bryan Bedell, Haskell’s vice president and water markets leader at the SLC office. “The one thing we don’t do is traditional design-bid-build,” he says.
In its inaugural year, the Salt Lake City ROC reported $74 million in revenue, and by 2023 the company’s revenue had more than quadrupled to $380 million. Haskell ranks fifth on ENR’s 2024 list of top contractors for the Intermountain region for companies in Utah, Idaho and Montana. Last year, the company was ranked number 14.
Built in 1955, the City Creek Water Treatment Plant is a critical water supply for nearly 365,000 people. Haskell built a temporary processing system to maintain base-level flows while the new plant is being built and brought online.
Images courtesy of Haskell
Focused on technology
“It turned out a lot [Haskell employees] were interested in moving here,” Bedell says, noting that the Salt Lake City office staff has grown to just over 100 AEC accounting, finance and human resources professionals. Bedell says the company also hires recent graduates from construction management and engineering programs in the region.
Operations are set up to draw resources from across the country for a given project. Typically, the contractor performs all critical path elements of a project, except electrical systems, and partners with outside firms for engineering design on water projects.
In addition to decades of experience in collaborative delivery, Bedell says Haskell’s commitment to early adoption of new technologies has helped the company grow.
A division of Haskell known as “Dysruptek” is dedicated to exploring, testing, and sometimes investing in emerging technologies. Last year, Dysruptek received a US patent for its employee-developed RAPTOR (Remotely Activated Pressure Test Observation and Recording) device for testing piping systems. Haskell also uses a virtual reality program for safety training known as HERO, which can place employees virtually in various workplaces to identify potential hazards.
World places of worship
In response to the LDS Church’s push to build more temples around the world, Haskell proposed modular construction as an option, and in 2019 Haskell made a strategic investment in BLOX, a company specializing in prefabrication and modular construction in Bessmer, Ala.
“Water reuse is really the way of the future.”
—Jeremy McVey, director of water project development, Haskell
To build a new temple in Helena, Mont., 25 prefabricated modular components were shipped to the site and assembled to create a 9,000-square-foot facility in a record 27 months. “[The modules] they’re essentially steel boxes that we’re sewing, stuffing and lining,” says William Rudder, who runs Haskell’s Religious and Cultural Market.
All roughing and plasterboard work is complete when it arrives, and Rudder says Haskell will use modular construction in some of the other temples it currently has underway in the US, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Africa.
Western water work
Hurricane, Utah is one of several cities in southern Utah that have experienced exponential growth in recent years, and as a result, their sewer system needed a solution to handle the greatly increased flows at their plant of treatment District officials chose to build a second treatment plant to accept flows from the neighboring towns of LaVerkin and Toquerville and some from the hurricane for processing and reuse in secondary water systems, primarily for agriculture. Haskell partnered with Draper, Utah-based Bowen Collins and Associates to design a $40 million facility that will treat 1.5 million gallons of water per day with a future capacity of 3.5 mgd . The facility is currently under construction in an area known as Confluence Park.
Michael Chandler, Ash Creek Special Services District Engineer, says Haskell excelled in providing significant input and cost-saving design modifications during the project’s pre-design workshops.
Another key project Haskell is currently building is the City Creek Water Treatment Plant, built in 1955, just six miles from downtown Salt Lake City. It was the first WWTP in the state. As a result of damage from the 2020 earthquake and supported by a $36.7 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the aging plant is now being replaced.
Haskell built a temporary treatment system that will operate while the old plant is demolished and rebuilt on site. The temporary system will handle about half of the 8 mgd the existing plant puts into the distribution system, which is “the minimum capacity they need to maintain in the system while we tear down and replace the facility,” says Jeremy McVey, water director . project development in Haskell’s SLC office.
The $100 million project began in the fall of 2023 and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2027. McVey says Haskell hopes to lead many more water reuse projects in the region. “Water reuse is really the way of the future,” he says. “We’re looking at everything from reuse in secondary systems like Hurricane to carrying wastewater to potable use.”
