Gold Hard Hat Award

The Wildlife Experience
Submitted by: Saunders Construction Inc. and Trautman & Shreve

The $35 million Wildlife Experience museum and entertainment complex in Douglas County opened its doors to the public last month, offering visitors new ways of understanding the natural world. Wildlife Experience is a non-profit, private 501c3 entity built with funding from the Re/Max Corp. and its founders, Dave and Gail Liniger.

The 130,000-sq.-ft. building features multiple copper roof elevations, natural stone walls, wood and granite flooring, a sophisticated outdoor water feature, a 315-seat IWERKS Theater, a ballroom and cafe, and plenty of space for displaying wildlife art.

According to Brian Klipp, a principal at Klipp Colussy Jenks DuBois Architects of Denver - the project architect for Wildlife Experience - the main reason for building the museum "was to cultivate a deep appreciation of the world of animals and man's interdependence with this world." Klipp gives ample credit to Denver's Saunders Construction, the general contractor, for making the design team's vision a reality.

According to Fred Brown, project manager for Saunders Construction, Wildlife Experience is one of the best buildings his firm has ever constructed. "It definitely isn't just a big box. It's a complex building, with the multiple roof elevations, natural materials and high-end systems. It was a challenge to build."

The long-lead time for ordering materials provided one of the biggest project challenges, Brown said. The granite floors were imported from Italy, and for the sandstone, Saunders had to work directly with the quarry four months ahead to get it in time for installation.

Also, the change to the IWERKS theater format late in the process meant a significant redesign of several systems and added to the square footage of the building. Brown credits Rocky Mountain Prestress with saving time by manufacturing and installing the taller panels quickly and efficiently.

Safety and fall protection were crucial issues on the project, especially because of the many roof elevations and sharing of scaffolding by different trades in a short space of time. Despite that fact, Saunders experienced no lost-time injuries on the jobsite.

The sequencing of trades in a 14-month schedule was also a big challenge, Brown said, because the high level of craftsmanship required made teamwork a top priority.

One of the critical trades at Wildlife Experience was the HVAC system design and installation. The building required a full-range of sophisticated mechanical and plumbing systems. Partly because of the special environmental requirements of the various types of art on display, there was a need for close control of humidification and the quiet delivery of air within the building.
Denver's Trautman & Shreve, the mechanical contractor, worked with engineers at The Ballard Group to design and install a whisper-quiet air handling unit that provides 100,000 cfm of humidity-controlled air.

The HVAC system includes two centrifugal water chillers that will deliver 250 tons of cooling each, two heating boilers delivering 3,600 mbh each for heated water and two steam boilers for humidification, delivering 1,600 mbh each.

Especially challenging was an underfloor system for air delivery in the theater. A state-of-the-art digital control building management system was installed by Trautman & Shreve to operate all systems.

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