For nearly 90 years, Hensel Phelps has grown by looking ahead. What began as a small Northern Coloradoan business in 1937 has evolved into a national organization helping clients bring complex, innovative facilities and infrastructure to life. Along the way, the tools, technologies and expectations shaping the built environment have changed dramatically. So has the way Hensel Phelps’ people work, learn and collaborate.
Having outgrown the useful life of its original campus, Hensel Phelps broke ground on September 30 on a new corporate headquarters in Loveland, Colorado, creating an opportunity to build a workplace that can support the company’s people, growth and evolving ways of delivering excellence.
The new Hensel Phelps Headquarters (HPHQ) will serve as a home for the company’s corporate teams while creating new spaces for employees from across the enterprise to connect, learn and share ideas. Located within Avenue South at Centerra, the four-story 143,000-square-foot facility is being designed to support the company’s continued growth and evolving operations.
The project also provides something less tangible: an opportunity for Hensel Phelps to put its own ideas about the future of the built environment into practice.
Designing a Modern, Collaborative Workspace at HPHQ
Construction has always been a people-driven business. Technology has changed how teams connect, share information, strategize and support the work happening across the enterprise, but the ability to bring people together remains critical. Complex challenges are solved through conversations between different disciplines, knowledge shared across teams and opportunities for employees with different experiences to learn from one another. HPHQ is being designed with those interactions at the forefront.
Flexible workspaces, training areas and collaborative environments will provide a variety of options for teams to work together while allowing the building to adapt as needs continue to change. Natural light, expansive views and exterior connections to the landscape of the Rocky Mountain foothills are also being incorporated into the workplace experience. The result is intended to support both focused individual work and the moments when people need to come together to solve a problem, share expertise or develop a new idea.
Pioneering Mass Timber and Sustainable Design
A company headquarters presents a unique challenge for a builder as many of the decisions Hensel Phelps helps clients make every day now become its own. How should a building respond to changing workplace needs? How can design and construction decisions support the people who use it? Where can new materials and building practices improve performance? And how can those choices create value over the life of the facility? HPHQ gives Hensel Phelps an opportunity to explore those questions firsthand.
Environmental performance and human well-being are being integrated throughout the design. The project is pursuing LEED v5 Gold and WELL Platinum certifications and will implement a solar power system that aims to generate energy equal to at least 20% of the building’s peak electrical demand.
Mass timber will also be incorporated into the structure, helping reduce embodied carbon while introducing a natural material into the workplace. For Hensel Phelps, the material creates another opportunity to connect innovation with the people responsible for putting it in place. The company is partnering with Carpentry Plus Inc. to build on recent hands-on training that gave craft professionals experience with mass timber installation, material protection and quality control.
Those lessons extend beyond a single building. Experience gained through HPHQ can help teams continue developing the knowledge needed to evaluate and execute similar strategies on future projects.
Building a Foundation for the Next 90 Years
As Hensel Phelps approaches its 90th anniversary in 2027, HPHQ reflects both where the company has been and where it intends to go next. Founded in Northern Colorado, Hensel Phelps has grown far beyond its original footprint, but the decision to build its next headquarters in Loveland reinforces a long-term commitment to the region, its people and the generations of employee-owners who will follow.
The building is intended to serve as a place where ideas and relationships can continue to grow across the enterprise. By creating a space designed to encourage creativity and collaboration, HPHQ will support the people and functions that help move Hensel Phelps forward.
The September 30 groundbreaking marked the beginning of construction. It also marked the start of a new chapter for Hensel Phelps, one designed around the people who will shape what the company becomes next.
