The American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA) has named Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) as a 2020 Engineering Excellence Award finalist for their work on Emerson College’s Little Building at 80 Boylston Street in Boston, Massachusetts.
The 2020 Engineering Excellence Awards were recently announced and will be celebrated at the 2021 ACEC/MA Engineering Excellence and Awards Gala. The awards celebrate innovation, ingenuity, and excellence in engineering achievement.
Situated on a busy corner facing Boston Common, Emerson College’s Little Building needed work to upgrade the student dormitory and address the failing facade. With the Little Building housing over 700 students during the school year, it was critical to limit the time this building would be offline. The SGH team collaborated with the Boston Landmarks Commission to develop a plan for renovating the twelve-story structure and replicating the deteriorated facade, while improving thermal performance and occupant comfort. By using prefabricated panels, the project team was able to replicate the façade, improve the building’s performance, and minimize the field construction time, allowing the Little Building to open to students on time for the Fall 2019 semester. With this project, Emerson College was able to revitalize an important campus building, allowing students and the surrounding community to benefit from this project for years to come.
“The Engineering Excellence Awards program recognizes engineering firms for projects that demonstrate a high degree of achievement, value and ingenuity,” said Jennifer Howe, President of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts and Principal and Vice President at SMMA, Symmes Maini & McKee Associates. “Entrants are rated by an independent panel of judges from the architectural community, the construction industry, academia, the media, and the public sector on the basis of uniqueness and originality; future value to the profession and perception by the public; social, economic and sustainable development considerations; complexity; and successful fulfillment of the client/owner’s need, including schedule and budget. We congratulate them and thank them for their contributions to improving the quality of our everyday lives.”
About ACEC/MA
The American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA) is the business association of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island engineering industry, representing over 120 independent engineering companies engaged in the development of transportation, environmental, industrial, and other infrastructure. Founded in 1960 and headquartered in Boston, MA, ACEC/MA is a member organization of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) based in Washington, DC. ACEC is a national federation of 51 state and regional organizations. For more information on ACEC/MA, visit their website at www.acecma.org. ACEC/MA is undertaking an awareness campaign to educate the public on the many contributions engineers make (or the engineering innovations) in everyday life through their hash tag #EngineeringGoFigure. To Follow us on Twitter: @ACECMA.
