Rafn Company : Commercial General Contractor : Blog

The Next Great Green Building Certification

06/15/2017
2017Q2, GREEN

Arguably, the modern green building movement began with the first Earth Day in April of 1970. And the popularization of the LEED Certification beginning in the late 1990’s brought sustainable building certification into the mainstream. Add in other certifications like Built Green, Green Globes, and t…

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All the Easy Sites Have Been Taken

06/12/2017
2017Q2

How does a contractor figure out what they will encounter when they dig underground for construction? What are the most common things left behind by past development? And what steps does the contractor take to mitigate the environmental, public and worker safety, and project schedule impacts when…

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Project Tour : Cambridge Apartments Renovation

06/08/2017
2017Q2, PROJECT TOUR

The Cambridge Apartments renovation project consists of a complete seismic retrofit to the 10-story turn-of-the-century building as well as a full plumbing infrastructure replacement, new lighting wiring, new fire sprinkler system, unit renovations, and elevator modernization. The building is…

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National Historic Preservation Advocacy Week

03/22/2017
2017Q1, RENO

I’ve been a board member of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation for a number of years. This past March was the first time I participated with the Trust’s annual delegation to Washington DC for National Historic Preservation Advocacy Week. This year and for the foreseeable future, it will be …

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What is Architectural Precast Concrete?

03/22/2017
2017Q1, GUEST

When I tell people that I work for an architectural precast concrete company they usually look at me like I just said something to them in a foreign language. I get it. Before I started at Olympian Precast I worked for several cast-in-place concrete subcontractors, and I still had no idea what…

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