Durrant provides architecture, engineering and project delivery services to clients in a number of diverse industries in its nine locations throughout the United States.

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Not many firms can say they have 75 years of experience under their belts, and even fewer can kick off the celebration by opening a new corporate headquarters. Durrant, a national full-service architecture and interior design firm based in The Port of Dubuque, Iowa, has managed to do both.

Not only did the firm find the perfect location for its new offices, it had the staff to transform an old industrial site into something both dynamic and environmentally friendly, according to CEO Charles Marsden.

“We were in our last multistory building since 1977,” Marsden notes. “It’s already become a great celebration here. We are quite pleased with how things have turned out. “We truly are a firm that is focused on the building industry, and architecture is a predominant part of that, but our other divisions can also manage their own projects.”

Durrant provides architecture, engineering and project delivery services to clients in the aviation, healthcare, higher education, retail, justice and hospitality sectors, among others. In addition to its headquarters, the company operates eight other locations nationwide in Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. Roughly 75 percent of the company’s revenues are generated by repeat business.

Because the firm’s client-centric philosophy has served it well, Marsden says it intends to continue serving a diverse clientele. “Our business model has not changed much over the years,” Marsden asserts. “We have been a multidisciplined firm since the 1950s and we have always operated on that foundation. We continue to focus more on the project and the client, rather than on each individual discipline that we have here.

“Ours is a very client-centric teaming environment and that’s something that we continue to refine,” he continues. “We take the approach that our key people have come from the same accredited curriculum and have sat through the same exams as everyone else, but our difference is that we can be more client-focused.”

Old Building, New Life
One of Durrant’s top strategic initiatives during the development of its new $4 million, 19,000-square-foot headquarters was to utilize sustainable features, putting it on pace to earn LEED Platinum certification. Because the renovated building was an adaptive reuse of a former industrial building, many opportunities existed to reuse materials.

“Sustainability is a big thing these days and our client base has gone from looking at it a bit skeptically with concerns about cost, to reacting today in a matter that suggests they expect sustainability as a matter of course; it’s not something that’s negotiable,” Principal and LEED AP Gary Bechtel says. “We really involved a lot of the office, but it was kind of hard not to when we are a design firm.”

From using solar panels to heat water and using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, to using occupancy sensors in low-traffic areas to landscaping that requires little irrigation, Durrant has set a positive example for its clients, Bechtel says. The new facility, which was the former Adams Manufacturing building in Dubuque, required an extensive redesign.

A low-roofed building extension was removed, leaving an 80-foot by 20-foot space complete with a gabled roof and steel-framed structure with brick corner piers. The original exterior walls, some of which are still in place, are typical industrial steel sash with wire-textured glass. However, after years of functioning as a manufacturing shop, the building contained asbestos and concrete floors, which were contaminated by years of exposure to machine oil.  

Despite some of the poor building conditions, Durrant was able to reuse much of the materials during new construction. “In the building itself, we achieved over 90 percent diversion of construction waste,” Bechtel maintains.