MHA Diabetes Education Center

To combat diabetes risks with members, the MHA Nation established the MHA Diabetes Education Center, a community-based health monitoring and instruction facility offering wellness, fitness, and nutritional mentoring services. Features include a world-class demonstration-style teaching kitchen with internet broadcast capabilities, fitness areas, indoor track, flexible meeting spaces, offices, yoga studio, and community gardens. Poor soils meant a planned basement was not feasible. Instead, rammed aggregate geopiers reinforced the foundation and cost management allowed for a detached storage building. Much of the project was done during a brutal North Dakota winter. The building shell was erected and enclosed but plumbing and first-floor slabs could not be executed due to frozen ground. The Consolidated Construction site superintendent creatively re-sequenced the project so the second floor was constructed during winter, with plumbing, slab and first-floor construction taking place in spring. The project was completed on time, on budget, with zero recordable worker accidents, injuries, or OSHA violations.