McKinstry's Moment

1970s, Dean Allen graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington with bachelor of science degrees in biochemistry and psychology.

But before pursuing graduate school, Dean’s father suggested he come and work for McKinstry and save money. Dean never quite made it to graduate school.

“I found out that construction was really fun and that McKinstry was a great little company,” Dean Allen says.

George Allen died in 2004, but not before seeing McKinstry grow into the state’s largest mechanical contractor, which offered a full line of services, from designing to engineering to constructing systems. It had also become a local leader in managing and retrofitting building systems. McKinstry’s portfolio of projects includes Amazon.com’s headquarters, the Fairmont Olympic Hotel and Qwest Field.

While such services as managing a facility’s energy use seem like no-brainers today, Allen acknowledges that talking building owners into the servicing and managing of their systems was a struggle.

“We built this system when it wasn’t hip to be in the business of conserving energy,” he says. “It was also difficult to get started because the Puget Sound region has some of the cheapest kilowatt prices in the country. We honed our skills in the toughest market there is.”

Those skills are now proving successful in other markets around the country as McKinstry opens offices in Denver and Minneapolis.

This expertise in retrofitting also helped McKinstry land a federal contract that may potentially be the company’s biggest in history. And no, it didn’t come from Barack Obama. The 10-year contract was actually announced by the outgoing Bush administration and could be worth up to $5 billion for the firm. On Jan. 2, McKinstry was named one of 16 service companies that the U.S. Department of Energy has identified to help construct and retrofit federal buildings to meet goals for energy efficiency, water conservation and renewable energy use. The Department of Energy is seeking to reduce its energy use by 30 percent.

Under the terms of the contract, McKinstry will design, construct and obtain all necessary financing for certain federal projects and the agency involved will pay for the work over time from the money it saves from reduced energy and utility bills.

CONTINUING TO INNOVATE   
As he sits amid various papers and projects in his office, Dean Allen says he never regrets his decision to begin work at McKinstry 32 years ago and forego a career in health care, partly because he’s been able to pursue other interests. While he’s involved in various conservation projects and is a major basketball fan, his main outside interest remains the life sciences.

In fact, he spends about one-third of his time working with various health care groups. Not only is he a board member for PATH, the nonprofit organization that is working to improve the health of people around the world, he also sits on the boards of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and Global Partnerships.

Allen’s interests have also been embraced by his children. His son, Matthew, is a shooting guard for the Swarthmore Garnets and his daughter, Teryn, is a graduate of Georgetown University and is involved in international health initiatives. She returned at the beginning of this year from a working trip to South Africa.

As for the future, Allen expects to continue innovating at the company. While most construction firms anticipate 2009 will be a down year, he believes McKinstry will continue growing as more companies look for ways to save money at their facilities. He also promises to continue to push McKinstry’s boundaries.

“I think of it more as experimenting than risk-taking,” Allen says of McKinstry’s new initiatives. “It is illogical to do the same things over and over again. We’ve tried to stay on the leading edge, while doing our best to avoid the bleeding edge. We’ve crossed that line occasionally, but I think we’ll be just fine.”