This past fall, DPR Construction’s Denver, CO, team took on a facility renovation project for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver (BGCMD)’s Shopneck Club.

From initial planning to completion, the hands-on community initiative project took six months and culminated in two full volunteer days—totaling 120 hours—with half of DPR’s Denver team in attendance.

The project scope included removing deteriorating wooden shade structures, replacing wooden plank fencing (separating the football field from the surrounding garden), sanding and stripping down the vertical posts, staining the new planks and existing posts, and removing/reinstalling the garden’s irrigation system.

Although this DPR office does not have a local Craft workgroup, the local team rolled up their sleeves to provide the Shopneck Club with an outdoor space youth will enjoy for years to come.

Tom Ventker, a member of DPR’s operations team, said, “Regardless of the talent that we have, everyone has something special to contribute. We're going to find a way to bring in the right partners, or the right people, to give the organization what they need.”

What made this community service project even more special was how it gave the Denver team a chance to bond and collaborate in person after spending months apart due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our Denver office is unique in that our individual roles and responsibilities do not overlap, so it’s not often we have a reason to collaborate or connect face to face,” said Andrea Walker, who leads the Central region’s communications team. “Each of our roles vary to support different functions, core markets or regions across the company. We have a small operations team building for existing customers that wanted us to come here and build in Denver.”

Having collaborated on CI projects in the past, BGCMD is no stranger to DPR, but supporting the Shopneck Boys & Girls Club is a recent partnership that is expected to continue. Project planning for additional work in 2022 at the club are already underway to replace approximately 20 badly damaged and splintering wooden picnic tables and constructing new shade structures.

“This Club is making a significant impact in the community, and this renovation will really go a long way for a huge breadth of kids coming in and out of their facility every day,” said Ventker.

Projects like these happen year-round across DPR offices in support of the company’s philanthropic vision of building possibilities for the under-resourced, particularly through skills-based volunteering. In 2021, DPR volunteers completed 73 pro-bono construction projects with a value of $1.2 million for nonprofit partners. These projects aim to enable organizations to maximize their impact through increased physical capacity and flexibility, a strengthened sense of pride of place, and greater safety for participants.

Philanthropy is one of DPR’s four Pillars of Global Social Responsibility, which also includes People Planet and Partners.