When it comes to higher education projects, PCL Construction’s stellar reputation stretches across North America, with outstanding results on campuses across Canada and the United States. PCL doesn’t just build the buildings where people learn, though. Students also need places to live while attending university. Living on campus means students have easier access to school resources, faculty and peer-to-peer learning — all of which increase their chances of success.

PCL has created housing for thousands of California students over its history and has an extensive understanding of what students need for an engaging, enriching postsecondary experience. Over the past 10 years, PCL has steadily climbed Building Design+Construction magazine’s ranking of the largest university sector contractors in the United States, reaching the third spot in 2022 with more than $413 million in revenue in the sector.

Some of PCL’s most prominent student housing projects have been in California, where the company has worked closely with both the University of California system and the California State University system to deliver housing projects on time and on budget — projects that give students one less thing to worry about while getting their education.

PCL’s commitment to quality and value has made it a partner that postsecondary institutions across California can rely on to execute housing projects of any size and budget. And its knowledgeable experts work hard every day to find innovative ways to solve problems. 

PCL is a long-standing postsecondary partner to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Since 1992, PCL’s California Buildings office has taken the lead on nearly 40 projects that have transformed UCLA’s campus, including several student housing projects. In fact, between 2018 and 2022 — including during the COVID-19 pandemic — PCL delivered on time and on budget three student housing megaprojects collectively worth $750 million at UCLA:

“I always say we’re considered a trusted advisor,” says Jeffrey Hoese, a PCL general superintendent who has worked on various UCLA projects for the last 15 years. “UCLA likes how we operate financially, how we execute in the field and how we communicate with their consultants, their inspection teams and their fire marshal. We take the burden off them because we can take the lead on almost anything they need with the right mix of experience and innovation.”

With the completion of these three projects, UCLA became the first University of California campus to guarantee housing for all undergraduate students. But these projects don’t just serve students; they’ll also be part of the Olympic Village for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

While these projects meet high standards when the keys are turned over, that quality must be maintained throughout their entire life cycles. With careful planning during the construction process, informed by extensive experience in student housing projects, PCL helps simplify the maintenance and upkeep.

Some of that planning involves materials used in construction. Student housing requires easy-to-maintain, long-lasting materials, considering the wear and tear of continuous student use. “Clients keep an eye on life-cycle costs, not just first-time costs,” explains Roger Langevin, a PCL senior project manager who led a recent $76.2 million, 506-bed student housing development at California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). “For example, the college’s initial plans included carpet throughout the entire complex. But after maintenance discussions with the owner, we switched from carpet to vinyl flooring because it’s so much easier to clean and maintain. They’d have to rip out carpet every two or three years because of the damage and stains.”

Another factor in preconstruction planning is uniformity from unit to unit. This allows maintenance workers to find problems and fix them with minimal disruption.

“It’s important to UCLA that the maintenance team can service an apartment without disrupting multiple units,” says Tiffany Whipple, a PCL senior project manager who worked on both Gayley Heights and Southwest Campus Apartments. “PCL works with UCLA to understand the end users’ requirements across their many campus buildings.

“Because the student experience is the most important criterion to the client, they want maintenance personnel to have access to their campus buildings quickly to complete a repair,” she adds. “So we make sure we’re not burying access panels in the middle of a student room. Potentially, water could be leaking into the unit or disrupting other students because maintenance can’t get in quickly enough.”

Smaller schools, however, are looking for cost-effective solutions — and PCL’s expertise means it can find ways to increase amenities at the same cost.

“We worked with CSUDH to maximize their budget and give them what the students wanted,” Langevin says, adding that not many contractors offer the collaborative design-build method that PCL does.

“We showed them current student housing trends, like the move toward triple-occupancy dorm rooms,” he adds. “Students like that living situation, and increased room occupancy gave the university more money to put into amenities such as air conditioning, common areas with pool tables and fireplaces, and exterior features like basketball courts, a fire pit and courtyard seating areas. Maximizing the space inside the building opened opportunities to add features outside the building.”

PCL also worked with CSUDH to put contingency funds back into the project. This allowed the conversion of some dorm rooms into single accessible rooms with their own bathrooms, as well as building out a shell space to accommodate an apartment for the resident coordinator. 

No matter what amenities are going into a building, though, keeping access to all parts of the campus open for students and staff is paramount. PCL’s experts study the campus geography — including routes used by both pedestrians and vehicles — to provide the best construction experience for all stakeholders.

“Understanding the university, its turnover process, milestone dates and how the new buildings will tie into campus utilities is critical,” Whipple says. “Campuses never shut down, so that means our construction work happens continuously around students and pedestrian traffic. Sidewalk or street closures require a lot of planning because the university needs to notify their stakeholders — professors, students, hospitals, anyone on campus.”

At Gayley Heights, PCL teams were working on a constrained job site that bordered one of the busiest intersections in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, which could never be completely shut down. This posed a myriad of safety concerns — for workers, for motorists, and even for pedestrians — especially during demolition of the old building and during material deliveries.

“The plan we put together affected parking meters, two different roads and two different sidewalks — each of which is under the authority of a different entity,” says PCL Senior Superintendent Justin Kanter. “We had the strictest delivery schedule I’ve ever had on a project. We only had one way in and one way out. We were talking logistics every day and coordinating with trades foremen to talk through deliveries and logistical challenges and how to make sure they could keep going the next day.”

At Olympic and Centennial, crews had to contend with a steep grade change from one end of the site to the other, so the team had to be proactive and go beyond usual safety practices. The slope was factored into the development of pre-job safety instructions and a job hazard analysis so that every person on the site knew the risks as they moved around and how to mitigate them. The project earned a Gold Safety Award from insurance company Liberty Mutual for the team’s commitment to promoting and maintaining a safe workplace.

The site also abuts an ecological reserve, which PCL crews protected with an eight-foot fence with sandbags along the bottom to contain construction debris.

The Southwest Apartments site, meanwhile, was also constrained and located in the middle of a densely populated area. At one point, six separate cranes were operating on the site. PCL addressed other site challenges through innovative uses of technology. Drones were used to scan for geographic and utility data around other ecologically sensitive areas and to review existing conditions and progress of site work. 

Another challenge with all three UCLA projects was making sure construction wasn’t an eyesore as well as an impediment. Noise and debris had to be kept to a minimum.

At Olympic and Centennial, tennis courts and a library were located near the job site, so it was critical to keep construction work out of sight. Construction manager Sam Wen says the solution was a plywood barrier around the delivery area. “We do our best to stay out of sight and out of mind,” he says. PCL also built a stairway through the trees so students could bypass the work site on their way to the tennis courts or the library.

There was also only one access point for deliveries on the site, so they were kept on a tight schedule. “We paved a grassy area so trucks could pull off the main road to make deliveries,” Hoese explains. “Navigating the campus takes time and effort. UCLA likes how we think logistically so we don’t disrupt any of their operations.”

Scheduling played an even bigger part in the Gayley Heights project. When government-mandated COVID shutdowns forced production delays on all the windows for the project — most of which spanned two floors in the design — Kanter and his team worked with their trade partners to revise the schedule and get as much work as they could done while they waited.

“We basically had to look at it and say, ‘How do we keep going? What would we need to move on to the next step?’” he says. “We banded together with our trade partners to continue with rough-ins and drywall and paint. In some cases, we put up plastic where the windows would be and kept going. We worked with our partners to give the client the most successful scenario.”

While the window production delays were out of PCL’s control, it mitigated other potential delays by self-performing some of the work — like pouring concrete, framing and drywalling — without subcontracting it. Self-work translates into seamless coordination, effective project management, a greater ability to find efficiencies and less costly rework. On the Olympic and Centennial towers, PCL self-performed the structure, which accounted for about 14% of the project’s total value of nearly $200 million.

“When we control the resources, we can deal with anything that comes to mind for the client,” Hoese says.  

California has been facing severe student housing shortages for years. It’s one of the priciest housing markets in the United States, and vacancy rates are notoriously low; in Humboldt County in Northern California, for example, rates were between 0% and 3% in early 2022, compared to about 6% nationwide.

Amid this crisis, UCLA announced it would guarantee campus housing for all undergraduate students. It was a bold promise that required a bold partner. And PCL is proud to be that partner.

This partnership continues to reap benefits for both sides. Both the Gayley Heights and CSUDH projects have won Awards of Merit at the PCBC Gold Nugget Awards. UCLA’s Olympic and Centennial Halls, along with Southwest Apartments, have also received recognition, securing Engineering News-Record California's Best Project and Award of Merit in the higher education category, respectively.

In November 2023, UCLA chancellor Gene Block received the Chairman’s Award from the Los Angeles Business Council for leading the university’s commitment to developing and guaranteeing student housing.

“The socioeconomically diverse student body that UCLA serves should still have access to excellent facilities, thoughtfully built living and learning spaces, and examples of the very best of architectural and artistic achievement,” Block said in accepting the award.

As the need for student housing continues to grow, PCL will be there every step of the way.