Outstanding Engineering Project

John Bologna, president of Coastal Engineering Co. (CEC), still remembers the devastation upon seeing his church, the Cape Cod Bible Alliance Church in Brewster, reduced to a pile of rubble and smoke after the building was destroyed by arson in 2012. When the time came to rebuild, Bologna and his team saw it as an opportunity to enhance the facility.

“We re-graded the site to create a nice two-story elevation of the west side of the building with lots of windows so you don’t get that basement kind of feel on the lower level,” Bologna says. As a result of the improved building layout, which now features more space for classrooms and youth group activities, the footprint of the new church grew from 14,000 to 24,000 square feet.

For their work on the new church, completed in June of 2016, CEC was awarded gold in the 2016 BRICC Awards’ Outstanding Engineering Project category.

“The theme of the project was ‘beauty from the ashes,’” Bologna says. “It’s like the story of the phoenix.” In giving new life to the Alliance Church, Bologna says his company’s main objective was to create an efficient, durable, and resilient new building. The hymn “How firm a foundation… is laid for your faith” proved fitting, says Bologna, after his team salvaged the existing foundation. Since the previous building consisted of all wood-frame construction, the team used prefabricated components—including a structural steel frame, precast concrete flooring, and fabricated roof trusses with a nonflammable exterior siding—wherever possible in the rebuild. To help maximize energy efficiency, CEC specified super insulated 12-inch-thick exterior walls and high-efficiency mechanical systems.

“Working with the Coastal team was a delight,” says Jim Austin, chairman of the building committee. “They were there for us  at every turn and very attuned to what we needed, guiding without imposing. More than engineers, they became friends.”