Swanson Rink is excited to announce that Jonetta Owens is the third recipient of the Superior Standards Scholarship. Jonetta’s touching essay, her determination to succeed regardless of circumstance, and her proven dedication to Bannock Youth Center shown by volunteering her time as an intern at the organization ultimately made her the clear winner of this year’s scholarship. With help from the Superior Standards Scholarship Jonetta will continue attending National American University getting her one step closer to obtaining her Associates Degree in Criminal Justice.

Swanson Rink hosts an annual kickball tournament to raise money for the Superior Standards Scholarship fund, benefiting Bannock Youth Center. Bannock Youth Center is an organization that is part of Volunteers of America Colorado and provides living skills, leadership training, mentoring, and resources to youth in the Volunteers of America transitional living programs. Swanson Rink has chosen to support this program for the past several years, and plans to continue to grow the scholarship fund so that more youth can achieve their educational goals.

Congratulations to the Chesapeake Energy Corporation for their 2015 Uptime Institute Brill Awards win for the Chesapeake Energy IT Computing Center! The Brill Awards seeks to showcase end users, service providers, and technologies that improve the industry’s ability to sustainably deliver IT services to end users while minimizing cost and other resources. Swanson Rink provided mechanical, electrical, plumbing and ancillary building system engineering services for this project. https://uptimeinstitute.com/training-events/brill-awards/award-winners

Congratulations to Gary Orazio for winning the ACEC 2015 George Washington Award. The George Washington Award is an annual award given to an ACEC Colorado individual member for outstanding service to the community, the progress of Colorado and the advancement of the public image of consulting engineering as a profession.

Eight years ago, Mr. Orazio was introduced to the Volunteers of America’s Bannock Youth Center, a Denver non-profit focused on underprivileged youth. After a couple of years of volunteering efforts, Mr. Orazio found a design and construction team to renovate the Bannock Youth Center to be a true gathering place for the youth of the program and spearheaded fundraising efforts for the upgrades. These efforts resulted in not only a beautiful new space, but Mr. Orazio received a “Special Friend of VOA” award from the Colorado Branch of Volunteers of America recognizing his tremendous contribution to the Bannock Youth Center. Most recently, Gary Orazio and his team created the ‘Superior Standards’ scholarship, which supports the program participants in meeting their educational goals.

Finally, Mr. Orazio has contributed to the public image of the engineering industry by consistently promoting the role of engineers and the value that engineers bring to the design and construction process. As the President of Swanson Rink for over 20 years, Mr. Orazio has consistently pushed his engineers to raise the bar on what it means to be an engineer, including: maintaining a high level of ethics, continuing to think outside the box to find the best solution for each client’s individual needs, and taking responsibility in the true role of being a consulting engineer.

A big congratulations to Swanson Rink’s Rory Heim and Brook Zion on winning the Platinum Pipe Award for their work on a Confidential Client Data Center, located in Oklahoma City, OK. They were the winners of the category of ‘Operational Benefits and Sustainability’. The Platinum Pipe Award recognizes excellence in piping and ducting system modeling using AFT software. Swanson Rink is proud to have these two accomplished engineers as part of our Mechanical Design Team.

Swanson Rink awarded the second “Superior Standards” Scholarship to another Bannock Youth Center program participant yesterday. We are pleased to announce that we have presented the award to Caudia. Claudia is currently taking courses in the medical field in order to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor and requested a scholarship grant for tuition assistance to help her through school. This scholarship was awarded based on Claudia’s past achievements and recommendations from her case worker. The Swanson Rink Scholarship Committee sees Claudia as an excellent example of someone who has benefited from Bannock’s programs and is happy to support her in her goals.

Swanson Rink plans to continue to grow the scholarship fund so that more youth can achieve their educational goals with the third annual kickball tournament in June 2015.

Congratulations to Rachel Barrett, who is now President of the AFCOM Rocky Mountain Chapter! In her new role, Rachel will oversee all operations of the AFCOM chapter and help chapter members stay on top of new trends in the industry and how transformations in IT impact the data center facility.

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of AFCOM is dedicated to providing education and resources for data center managers. Their mission is to enable data center management professionals to share industry best practices and to be the most comprehensive and effective resource available to the data center community.

Congratulations to Swanson Rink for making ENR’s Top 10 List in the Data Center design category! Swanson Rink continues to take on challenging and exciting data center work, including our most recently completed projects, Chesapeake Energy Data Center, ViaWest ComPark Data Center, and ViaWest Chaska Data Center.

In addition, Swanson Rink was named in the Top 5 MEP firms in Colorado/Wyoming.

If you would like to be a part of our award-winning team, please visit us our careers page!

Steve Bennett, Vice President of Aviation Services has been involved in the competitive cycling arena for over 20 years. He started out as a mechanic for his daughter who was the one that initially had an interest in cycling. While he was in his 40’s he would participate in “dad’s races” that took place as part of his daughter’s competitions, but after a couple of years Steve’s daughter lost interest in the sport. This is when he really began to get in to the world of competitive cycling; starting at the Masters 45+ age group. Although cycling keeps Steve healthy and fit, his main reason for competing is because it’s FUN. He enjoys the fact that strategy weighs heavy on his chances to win. Being an engineer for the last 35 years gives Steve an advantage when it comes to effectively strategizing. Since Steve has been racing with many of the same guys for almost 20 years he has learned their strengths and weaknesses and use them to his advantage. (Of course that goes both ways.)

Every cyclist has their own unique strengths and Steve has found his is the ability to “sprint,” which just like in running, gives him the ability to exert a lot of power for a short amount of time. Due to this strength he has focused his efforts in two of the four racing genres. His favorite race is the road race. This type of racing is similar to the style you would see during the Tour de France where the cyclists travel a long distance (often up to 75 miles in his case) in large groups. This type of race is particularly appealing to Steve because it requires endurance, the ability to sprint and of course, strategy. He also thoroughly enjoys criterium racing, which is a crowd pleaser since it is on a short course with many laps and usually only lasts about 30 minutes to an hour. Criterium racing is the genre where Steve recently won second place and is looking forward to the Masters State Criterium on June 23rd.

Steve has recently been seen racing in Colorado and New Mexico and anticipates making his 8th appearance at Nationals this September in Bend, Oregon. Steve’s next event is the Elephant Rock Ride which he will do with his wife on a tandem bicycle, leaving us with this statement “One of the great things about a tandem is that you cross the finish line together.”

Swanson Rink is proud to recognize three of our Mechanical Engineers as being a part of the ACE Mentor Program of Metropolitan Denver. ACE (Architecture, Construction, and Engineering) has been in Denver since 2004 and has worked with over 1,200 high school students in the area at no cost to the students. Swanson Rink’s Chelsey Lange, PE, has been involved with the organization for 3 years, and this past year recruited new staff members Sean MacKelvie and Rory Heim to the program.

These three members of our Mechanical staff have been volunteering their time for the past 14 weeks teaching the students about career opportunities in our industry and introducing them to a variety of hands-on, real world activities revolving around the Architecture, Construction and Engineering communities.

 

The main goal of these 14 week sessions is for the students to be able to plan and design mock projects based on real job sited throughout the Denver area. The students present their original ideas in front of their peers, teachers, families, and mentors.

Recently, Chelsey, Sean, Rory and Tim Chiddix, PE – Vice President, Mechanical – attended the annual “Blueprint to Success” event where 5 students were awarded scholarships based on their participation in the program, their presentations and an application process. Two students from Chelsey’s program were awarded with scholarships this year and Swanson Rink was honored to support both the students and our volunteers through a sponsorship at the Blueprint to Success event last week.

Congratulations to John Thomas, Director of Special Projects, for being reelected to the Board of Directors of the AGC of Colorado. John has been a member of AGC for 12 years, and has served on the Board of Directors for AGC for the past 8 years. The Mission for AGC of Colorado is to provide members with a competitive edge through excellence in advocacy, collaboration, leadership, networking, and services. In addition, he is also on the Board of Directors for the Specialty Contractors Council, and has held that post for the past 11 years.