March 14, 2022, by admin

Written by Karl Cranston Simmons

In this installment of the SPIFy journal, we interviewed Chris Balovich, president of CBC Construction Incorporated. CBC Construction is the company building SPIFy for the Science Center, and during the interview, we got some insight on how construction is going, and the challenges that have come with construction. 

To begin, we asked Chris what he finds to be the easiest part of construction.

“Every single one (project) has its own specific challenges, especially in today’s market, where materials are harder to get and cost more money for having to source from multiple places. Weather has been a factor recently. Easiest part is just getting and doing the work, once everything’s here.”

He went on to explain the top challenges with SPIFy’s construction. 

“One is supply issues, two, labor shortages, three, cost of materials, number four would be tides whenever we work against the tides down there. And number five, weather, you know, we’ve had a pretty pretty harsh winter for Sitka, we got pretty cold for quite a while so it kind of shut us down for that.”

As he said, so many things can impact construction. He goes on to say how the tides impact the work schedule. 

“Some days it’s good, some days we only get a couple hours of work and some days we can get a full day’s work and it’s just really, it’s a schedule killer.” 

“It hampers the morale of the crew, so you know with dark times out, you know, with no sunlight and cold, driving rain. Miserable working conditions but we’ve been toughing it out.”

The rainforest weather has significantly impacted the morale of the crew, but they’ve been persevering in constructing SPIFy. 

Next we asked Chris if construction is going smoothly, or if they’re in a rush. 

“It’s going smoothly, every job, you’re in a hurry to get it done. Everybody has deadlines. Everybody wants their job done as fast as possible. The sooner the better.”

Chris continues and incorporates the oil spill. 

“What the last two months from the uncovered oil, we found the ground and then the frozen winter we had you know, we’re going to be pushing pretty hard to get it done.”

“The Science Center is a very unique building. A lot of cool projects come through here. They’re not just a normal every day project, so like right now we’re working in a creek pouring concrete for salmon to spawn.” 

After Chris discussed the uniqueness of the Science Center, he also went on to say how rare it is to work on a fish hatchery. 

“There’s probably only a dozen hatcheries in southeast Alaska, so this is one raceway of a dozen, there might be a few more than that I’m sure, so this is just something that’s not seen or done all the time, and when these are installed, you know they have a fifty year lifespan or more so, the chance to work on these, it doesn’t come along very often so it’s kind of a cool project.”

Chris continues and explains a past project he’d done for the Science Center. 

“Another project we did for them was the Mill building, which was a really cool project … we disassembled a vintage building, and we put it back together so it looks vintage, but with today’s code upgrades.”

We then asked him what he finds exciting about constructing SPIFy. 

“It excites me because it’s a cool project, we’re right downtown. You know, it’s got a little bit of a challenge to it, and it’s for the good of the community. You know, people are going to learn how to spawn salmon, and it’s going to help in the long run with our fishing industry. And it’s a community oriented building down there, so kids are going every year to go learn about salmon spawning and add the touch tank and everything down there.”

As we neared the end of the interview, Chris commented on the Science Center staff and tourism. 

“Staff, they’re great to work with. It’s going to be a tourist sensation, you know, people are going to be able to come through there. So I think it’s a good community based project.”

To keep up on SPIFy and its progress and to learn more about the people working to make this happen, make sure to check back into the SPIFy journal to read more interviews.