Our Mission at Work

In today's fast-moving service industry, operating efficiently is crucial. To enable its employees to operate at the highest levels, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy chose us to design and construct a new office and warehouse facility in Golden Valley, Minn. With this optimized building, we're supporting their vision to "Lead the nation in delivering energy, service and value."

CenterPoint Energy is looking forward to enhancing our operational efficiencies in our Golden Valley Service Center. Our new facility will allow us to add value through superior customer service capabilities, new technologies and innovation.

Michael Jenson
Facilities Manager
CenterPoint Energy
Office and Warehouse Facility

With careers growing in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) industries, many educators are providing high-quality STEM education and enrichment to students. When Visitation decided to increase functionality of their entire campus and create a dedicated STEM education area to support their education mission and current initiatives (including an award-winning robotics team), they turned to our expertise to handle the complexities of their building.

We believe that the Visitation Heart and Mind project has created the kinds of learning environments that we need to prepare our students for 21st century success. Bringing the Visitation Heart and Mind project in on time and on budget was no small feat and was hugely appreciated. [Opus] respected that our mission is education, and were masterful in not having construction interfere with it. We loved working with Opus.

Dawn Nichols, Ed.D.
Head of School (Retired)
Visitation School

Efficient logistics and distribution is vital to ConAgra's mission of "making the food you love." When ConAgra needed to consolidate multiple Midwest distribution facilities into one centralized location in Frankfort, Ind., they turned to our team and the nearly 30-year shared history.

With a keen understanding of ConAgra Foods' business model and specific needs, our design-build process enabled completion of the immense build-to-suit project in an expedited timeline—just 52 weeks and six weeks ahead of schedule.

Our mission to make food that people love is important to ConAgra Foods in many ways. The distribution center in Frankfort allows us to stay cost competitive and distribute food at a price that people can afford.

Craig Weiss
Vice President of Supply Chain Planning, Programs and Logistics
ConAgra Foods

When Xcel Energy wanted to expand its downtown Minneapolis campus in order to bring together employees from separate offices and create workforce efficiencies, they chose us, a team with deep experience in corporate campus and urban development and construction.

Opus understood our vision for our downtown headquarters and worked diligently to bring this vision to life. The new Xcel Energy office space supports our business mission, consolidates our workforce and creates a unified campus.

Lawrence A. Bick, CFM, SFP
Sr. Director, Property Services
Xcel Energy

With their sights set on company growth, Freightquote—the nation's largest online shipping broker—began searching for a design-build firm that could meet their non-negotiable move-in deadline for a new headquarters office and main call center. Although others in the commercial real estate industry claimed meeting the deadline was impossible, our team embraced their timeline and budget.

While working closely with Freightquote, our team's deep office expertise and unique construction approach allowed us to develop a new state-of-the-art office space that would meet the company's growing business needs—and the vision of Freightquote's president, Tim Barton.

Opus was able to commit to our rigid deadline when no one else could. Their integrated approach allowed them to fast-track the project so we could move into our new 200,000-square-foot headquarters in nine months.

Tim Barton
Executive Chairman and President
Freightquote

With a growing student population and increasing demand for on-campus housing, Iowa State University chose our design-build team to deliver its first new residence hall in more than a decade on its Ames, Iowa, campus.

The University didn't just want a residence hall; they wanted a building that could foster learning and encourage student interaction and socialization. With that goal driving the process, our team sought every opportunity to integrate features that met or exceeded the goal.

We delivered betterments for ISU that included:

• a front porch for each house and casual collision areas to foster interaction
• maximized bed count (12% more beds at up to 45% lower cost per bed than comparable projects)
• a lobby entrance twice the size of the minimum requirement
• a nearly column-free structure that provides future flexibility
• increased sustainability through LEED Gold level design and construction strategies
• a student-centered design with increased natural light and ample study and social spaces throughout the building.

Our team delivered all of this for over $1 million less than ISU's target budget.

With strong business at MC Machinery Systems Inc., the company's workforce was expanding and on the brink of outgrowing their facility in suburban Illinois. With an eye to the future, MC Machinery turned to us for a new facility to meet the specific needs of their business operations and provide a better customer experience.

The new facility will allow MC Machinery to further expand its capabilities and service a diverse range of industries, including automotive, aerospace, energy, medical, military/defense, agriculture and more.

Our main motivator to build a new headquarters was our employees and customers. We wanted to provide them a new state-of-the-art place to come to work to everyday with updated technological resources that enable us to better serve our customers. We are beyond pleased with how Opus made this vision a reality.

Patrick Simon
Senior Marketing Manager
MC Machinery
Corporate HQ & Showroom
Industrial/Office Build-to-Suit

With a facility built in 1901, Ascension Church wanted to update their worship and education spaces to make them more efficient and appealing to its congregation, students, staff and faculty. They chose our experienced Client Direct Services team for this important work.

We began work on two overlapping phases in January 2016 and finished that November. Along the way, we treated the buildings as if they were our own, respecting their importance and Ascension's needs and operations throughout the project. For us, committing to Ascension's project meant fully committing to their mission and goals.

Opus has an understanding of and a shared commitment to our mission and the people we serve. It really comes out of a sense of charity and justice. And oftentimes we don't think of businesses as living those values. But in our setting I saw Opus live those values. They were committed to meeting the deadline which for us was really important. I mean it was teachers back in the building without a day to spare. They made it. They didn't bring any of the stress of making that all happen to me. They were kind. They were responsive. They didn't get tired of my asking questions. They didn't get tired of explaining things to me. They did it with graciousness all the way through. I said to them, "You've now shared your gifts with our mission. You may see it as a building that you fixed. But now you're part of us and part of our mission."

Patty Stromen
Church Administration
Ascension Church & School
Client Direct Services Renovation

With continuing expansion on the horizon, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) chose us to build their new headquarters in suburban Chicago. The five-story building is customized to their needs, including general work space for employees and areas for hosting industry conferences and events. AAP's new headquarters will support the organization's plans going forward.

Our vision for this project has always been quite simple: to create a place that enables our child health mission. This new headquarters is designed to support the work of our staff and our 66,000 members at the highest level. Our new headquarters is more than just an office building. It is designed to be the new home for the profession of pediatrics and through state-of-the-art surroundings and communications. It is where we can pursue the AAP's mission together.

Karen Remley, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H., FAAP.
CEO & Executive Vice President
American Academy of Pediatrics

To address a need for modern industrial space, our team delivered Dodd Road Business Center in Eagan, Minn., in early 2020.

The 152,500-square-foot speculative industrial building offers tenants convenient access to major transportation routes including interstates 35E, 494 and 94 and Highway 55. The shell building was flexibly designed to meet the requirements of a variety of tenants.

Later, on a very short timeline of 14 weeks, our team delivered a 104,928-square-foot tenant improvement for Safe Fleet, a provider of integrated safety solutions for fleets.

Safe Fleet consolidated four locations into this new, upgraded space with additional dock space, greater storage capabilities and office space to grow its workforce.

Our mission is to provide the best safety products. This facility supports our ability to do that. We now have a building with higher ceilings, better lighting and better ventilation, helping us live our mission. This new facility has allowed us to add a completely new product line and new equipment that we didn't previously have space for.

John Johnston
Director of Operations
Safe Fleet TI at Dodd Road Business Center