swriadmin, Author at Swanson Rink

Swanson Rink Hosts IIDA Green Team Expo

Last week Swanson Rink hosted the 4th Annual IIDA Rocky Mountain Chapter Green Team Expo in our offices. 12 sustainable services product vendors set up booths around Swanson Rink’s office suite, showcasing their newest and most innovative offerings. Over 50 attendees were present at the event, eager to learn about the latest in sustainable interior design concepts. As part of the event, Swanson Rink staff members Clare Epke, IIDA, LEED AP BD+C, LEED AP O+M, Project Manager and Sustainable Design Coordinator, and Sohana Arni, LC, Project Manager & Lighting Design Specialist, gave a CEU presentation on updates in LEED and lighting efficient design. Swanson Rink would like to congratulate IIDA on another successful event and thank them for allowing us to be a part of it!

Swanson Rink Honored by VOA

Volunteers of America and the Bannock Youth Center marked the official “opening” of their new playground with a ribbon cutting last month and Swanson Rink was there to celebrate. You may remember reading about a team of our staff braving the cold back in October to assemble a playground at the Bannock Youth Center, now it’s time to update you on the latest happenings!

VOA honored Swanson Rink (along with Recreation Plus, who donated the equipment) for their hard work and community involvement. Because of Swanson Rink’s dedication to improving our community through our work with the Bannock Youth Center several young families in the Denver Metro area have been able to enjoy a safe place to spend time together while also gaining the necessary skills to become positive, contributing members of our community.

At the playground dedication on July 30, the Swanson Rink team received a plaque recognizing their volunteerism as well as a picture signed by the young families and Bannock staff, who will get to reap the benefits of the playground, as tokens of appreciation.

Swanson Rink looks forward to continuing this great relationship with the Bannock Youth Center and Volunteers of America through new opportunities.

Swanson Rink Speaks on Data Centers from Coast to Coast

Swanson Rink is known for being a leader in the data center industry and this year we have been busy speaking on trends and topics from coast to coast and everywhere in between.

Swanson Rink President Gary Orazio was part of the panel for the “High Energy Efficiency! Low Workplace Effectiveness?” discussion at this year’s annual Uptime spring conference. The Uptime Institute Symposium was held in Santa Clara, California, and welcomed over 1,300 attendees and nearly 100 speakers and focused on the overarching topic of “The Global Digital Infrastructure Evolution.”

Gary also spoke with Bob Yester, Executive Vice President at Swanson Rink (who boasts more than 30 years of expertise in the data center industry), at the 7×24 Spring Conference in Boca Raton, FL, on June 5, 2013 on the topic of “Performance Challenge: Tier IV, PUE 1.2 Modular Build Out.” The basis of this presentation was how Swanson Rink was able to help the ViaWest Lone Mountain Data Center achieve Tier IV Certification while maintaining high reliability and substantially lower energy costs than the traditional IV facility.

If you would like see one of our data center presentations, Gary Orazio and Bob Yester will be speaking with Dave Leonard of ViaWest at the July 24 AFCOM Rocky Mountain Chapter meeting on the topic of “The impact of design assumptions on data center cooling.” This topic will also be presented at the AFCOM Phoenix meeting on August 23.

Results from the Bannock Youth Center Kickball Tournament

Swanson Rink hosted a kickball tournament this past Saturday to raise money for the Volunteers of America’s Bannock Youth Center. The purpose of this event was to raise money for a scholarship fund to be put in place at the Bannock Youth Center. Through this event, Swanson Rink was able to raise well over $2,000 as a basis for the fund and a large part of this was due to the generous raffle prizes we received from area donors.

We were joined by nine other teams eager to take home first place and the competition was fierce! Swanson Rink’s CAD technician Ryan Kelley put together his own team, and they were crowned first place after 5 rounds of play. It was a close championship game between them and Mortenson Construction who took home second place. In the game for third place, RJM Contractors came out victorious! Congrats to all of you, and the other incredible competitors from Iron Horse Architects, OZ Architecture, E Light Electric, Gensler, MOA Architecture, Volunteers of America, and Swanson Rink. We look forward to seeing these all of this year’s teams again, and can’t wait to find out who will be the new competition.

Swanson Rink had high hopes that this event would be the first on many of its kind, and we are confident after the success of this tournament that this event will continue to grow for many years to come. We would like to extend a BIG thank you to all of our participants, volunteers, and donors, we could not have done it without you!

Swanson Rink’s Biodesix, Inc. Project Wins IIDA Award

Swanson Rink teamed with Gensler for the Biodesix, Inc. project which received an award from the International Interior Design Association’s Rocky Mountain Chapter for best design on a budget.

Swanson Rink was responsible for the mechanical, electrical, fire alarm and plumbing engineering for Biodesix’s new 30,000 square foot office and lab space in Boulder, CO. For the electrical portion of this project Swanson Rink was responsible for the elaborate lighting design as well as the spectacular power layout and quality control checks that helped earn this award. Congratulations Greg Peer, Greg Mondragon, and Don Paus for your hard work on this project! Be sure to check it out.

Swanson Rink Continues Work at DIA with Five-Gate Southwest Airlines Expansion

Swanson Rink is currently working on the Concourse C West expansion design at Denver International Airport, consisting of approximately 57,000 enclosed square feet of new construction on two floor levels. In addition to the new construction, the work includes moderate renovation at the west end of the existing structure, including interior upgrades to the existing hold-rooms to provide continuity and transition between the new and existing buildings. Swanson Rink is currently providing mechanical and plumbing engineering, special systems design, life safety, fire protection design and engineering, security systems engineering, communications and data systems engineering. Swanson Rink is teamed with Wong Strauch Architects for this project, having previously worked with them on the Denver International Airport On-Call Concourse Design Services.

Swanson Rink to Host Kickball Fundraiser

Swanson Rink is set to host a charity kickball tournament on June 8, 2013. This is a FUN, FRIENDLY competition dedicated to helping out a good cause. While the event is bound to bring out some competitiveness in everyone, it is important to remember that the Bannock Youth Center is the real winner! The specific purpose of this event is to help raise money for a scholarship fund to be established at the Bannock Youth Center in Denver, CO.

If you have not had a chance to read about Bannock Youth Center in our blog before-this is your chance to find out about a great Volunteers of America organization. The Bannock Youth Center is committed to helping disadvantaged youth, as well as their young children, become independent, contributing members of society.

Swanson Rink has built a strong relationship with the Bannock Youth Center over the past couple of years. During this time we have provided them with childcare, wellness classes, Life Skills coaching, Youth Recognition and holiday parties, as well as a remodel to their facilities.

Be sure to subscribe to our blog to continue to receive information regarding our upcoming kickball tournament.

Swanson Rink Food Drive

As part of Swanson Rink’s commitment to the community, our Staff Accountant (and resident yoga instructor), Barbara Krucke, volunteered to lead a Life Skills class at the Bannock Youth Center during the month of April. With the topic being Healthy Cooking, Barbara chose the theme “Beans & Grains.” (Did you know that combining the two makes up a healthy, inexpensive, complete protein source?) Barbara created four recipes to be demonstrated to the class and challenged the Swanson Rink employees to a friendly competition:

The office was divided into four quadrants and each team was asked to donate ¼ of the necessary ingredients for each recipe. The purpose of the food drive was to culminate enough ingredients for participants to take home and recreate the demonstrated meals in their own kitchens. We are pleased to say that this contest brought out the competitive nature of our employees, and that Swanson Rink far exceeded all of Barbara’s expectations!

The new chalkboard wall in the Swanson Rink break area was the topic of conversation over the past week as quadrants began keeping tally by shading in their meters on the company blackboard. Each quadrant wanted to win so badly that employees were even sneaking out on their lunch breaks to gather more groceries and pull ahead of the competition. With one day left in the competition, we are nearly 100 items over our goal. One of our teams has more than doubled their goal-WAY TO GO!

Finally, if you are wondering why we mentioned yoga at the beginning of our blog, Barbara teaches yoga classes both at Swanson Rink and the Bannock Youth Center. The Swanson Rink yoga classes are on a donation-only basis (which Barbara then uses towards supplies for Bannock Youth Center). This quarter’s yoga money is being used to purchase food processors, cutlery sets, and cutting boards, to be raffled off during her cooking classes!

Stay tuned to the blog for updates from the “Beans and Grains” cooking class and information on Barbara’s upcoming smoothie class.

The Bannock Youth Center is operated by Volunteers of America, a non-profit organization in Denver, CO, committed to helping disadvantaged youth, as well as their young children, become independent, contributing members of society.

A BIG Thanks to Swanson Rink’s Jim Flint

You might recall reading about the Swanson Rink staff working together on tables for our new office back in January… Now it’s time to reveal the finished product!

After four months of hard work, the much anticipated walnut tables have arrived in the Swanson Rink offices. How did these tables come to be? The idea of crafting our own wood tables had been tossed around by company executives and managers during the preliminary visioning sessions for the new office back in the summer of 2012. Almost immediately everyone knew this was a job for Jim!

Our “jack of all trades,” Director of Information Systems, Jim Flint was able to acquire 20 year-old stock walnut that had never been used, for a steal of a price. He enlisted the troops and got to work. Swanson Rink’s Chelsey Lange, Michele Hendrick, and Andrew Alger joined Jim to cut the 1” thick walnut boards down to size. The next step was milling. (Jim just so happens to own of a 20 foot, 30 year old French sliding panel saw that is great for milling.) The saw uses 3 phase power and weighs about 4,000 pounds! After Jim and Andrew completed these steps, came the sanding, staining and finishing of the boards. The final touch was that each table was hand polished with a bees wax/carnuba finish.

The table bases were inspired by a combination of parson tables and the metal swirl design of the stainless steel at DIA. The bases were welded and a swirl finish was ground into the steel. Each table was designed to support upwards of 1,000 pounds!

Extra fun tidbit: These conference tables were so large they had to be hand carried up the stairwells and one even had to be placed on top of the an elevator car and brought up to the 12th floor through the elevator shaft!

Thanks again Andrew, Michele, Chelsey, and Jim!