Northwest Contracting in Bismarck, North Dakota, is a full-service general contractor and construction manager with more than 40 years of experience. The team offers services in construction management, design-build and concrete, and has crane and heavy equipment rentals as well as concrete pump truck rentals. It’s also a Butler pre-engineered building dealer.

We asked Eric Brenden, company co-owner, to share how the business has evolved over four decades and what trends he’s seeing in the construction industry today.

Q: What is Northwest Contracting’s story and how has the company evolved since it was founded?

A:

Northwest Contracting

was founded in 1983 by two partners who had been working for one of the local general contractors in Bismarck. They started primarily doing small concrete projects. After a couple of years, they acquired the Butler pre-engineered building line and started putting up Butler buildings. Soon after, they began doing commercial general contracting work. Construction management work followed in the early 2000s. Northwest Contracting was awarded the first public construction management job in the state of North Dakota for the University of North Dakota School of Medicine in Grand Forks. In the past 16 years, we have completed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction management projects in Bismarck and Mandan.

Q: What are the company’s biggest areas of growth right now?

A: We’ve recently seen a large increase in wood-framed multifamily projects. We are currently building residence halls for the University of Mary as well as Bismarck State College. We are working on a couple of multi-family housing projects as well.

Q: How would you describe Northwest Contracting’s position in the Bismarck-Mandan construction market?

A: Northwest Contracting has been doing business in Bismarck-Mandan since 1983. We are proud of the work that we have completed in the past and look forward to continuing to help our city grow. We have a solid market share built upon our reputation within the community and we strive to maintain and improve upon that every day.

Q: What types of projects make up the bulk of your work today and has that mix changed in recent years?

A: Northwest Contracting is a diverse company that can successfully perform a wide variety of commercial projects. Education, medical, retail, multifamily housing, restaurants and warehouses are some of the types of projects that we perform. The mix of our projects varies based on the current demands and trends within the community.

Q: What do you see as the biggest opportunities for the company over the next three to five years?

A: The industrial market, such as data centers, are a big growth opportunity, whether it is working on them directly or ancillary projects that occur because of those opportunities. Using prefabricated or modular construction as well as utilizing new technology that makes the project more efficient will be important to stay competitive in the future.

Q: What are some of the most interesting or challenging projects the company is currently working on?

A: We recently completed the Bavendick building on the Bismarck State College campus, which is a $40 million multipurpose athletic center. We are currently working on the $45 million University of Mary Athletic + Landscaping Improvements project. This project will bring football back to the University of Mary campus with a 2,500-seat grandstand, a large multi-purpose sports dome and unified campus landscaping. Both of these projects are great for the Bismarck-Mandan community.

Q: How are rising material costs, interest rates and other economic factors affecting construction projects and planning?

A: Of course, costs and interest rates are impacting everyone’s budgets. This is making it harder to get projects to pencil out for investors as well as public projects that are already dealing with tight budgets. This leads to an emphasis on designing cost-effective buildings and value engineering in order to make projects work.

Q: What are the biggest workforce challenges facing Northwest Contracting and how are you addressing them?

A: Experienced tradesmen are retiring and there aren’t enough young people to fill the knowledge gap. The CTE (career-tech education) programs in the schools are helping with this issue, but it takes time to grow the programs and workforce. We are actively involved with the high schools and colleges, so students have the exposure to pursue opportunities in the construction industry.

Q: What does Northwest Contracting do differently from other contractors in terms of project management or client service?

A: Northwest Contracting is different from most other construction managers because we have the ability to self-perform much of the work. This means that our supervisors have first-hand knowledge of the work and we can effectively manage the quality control as well as the schedule of the project.

Q: What changes in the Bismarck-Mandan region could have the greatest impact on your business?

A: Of course, the economy and availability of labor have the greatest impacts on our business. Except for the oil boom years, our growth has been slow and steady. The biggest challenge today for almost all industries is getting quality labor to meet the needs of the industry.

Q: What is something about Northwest Contracting that you think people outside the company might not realize?

A: Many people think we only do large projects, and some people know us only for our residential concrete work. We do projects ranging from small remodels to new high schools.

Q: If you had to point to one project, decision or turning point that captures where Northwest Contracting is today, what would it be and why? 

A: I don’t think there is one thing I can point to. I think it’s a combination of many decisions, hard work by our employees, and the support of the Bismarck-Mandan community that has helped us get to where we are today.

Carrie McDermott joined Prairie Business magazine in March 2023. She covers business industry trends in North Dakota, South Dakota and west central Minnesota. Email address: cmcdermott@prairiebusinessmagazine.com.

BISMARCK — Attorneys sparred before the North Dakota Supreme Court on Thursday, Sept. 10, over whether a district court judge correctly applied the law when he overturned a decades-old murder conviction of 65-year-old Werner Kunkel for the killing of Gilbert Fassett near Spirit Lake Nation.

In February,

Judge Daniel Narum found that, during a 1995 trial, prosecutors suppressed witness statements

to investigators that they saw Fassett alive after Aug. 1, 1986 — the date when prosecutors repeatedly claimed Kunkel murdered Fassett.

Kunkel’s lawyer could have used the statements to prove that Kunkel was “factually innocent of the crime,” Narum wrote in his order vacating the conviction.

The state appealed Narum’s decision in March, arguing in a brief that the previously-suppressed statements “do not outweigh the testimony of nearly a dozen witnesses that (Fassett) was last seen alive on August 1, much less the seven witnesses who testified that Kunkel confessed to the murder. Those statements cannot establish that Kunkel did not murder Mr. Fassett.”

Tanner Ecker / The Bismarck Tribune

During oral arguments Thursday, the state’s Deputy Solicitor General Asher Steinberg said North Dakota is one of only two states whose law requires that new evidence must “establish that the petitioner did not engage in the criminal conduct for which he was convicted” in order for a conviction to be overturned. He said the law requires that the new evidence must prove “actual innocence” and argues the suppressed statements did not meet that threshold.

The state’s attorneys also argued that Kunkel’s allegation of the state’s failure to disclose evidence, known as a Brady violation, was “untimely” and not allowed under state law.

“Kunkel waited 27 years after his conviction to request the State’s files in his case. … He should have discovered the evidence sooner,” the state’s brief to the court read.

Tanner Ecker / The Bismarck Tribune

But Kunkel’s legal team argued in its brief to the court that, “Kunkel did not bring his claim in time precisely because the State withheld the Brady evidence. In other words, the State asks for the benefit of a more favorable standard because it flouted its constitutional obligation.”

Kunkel’s attorneys said the state’s arguments “defy common sense.”

“The State’s attempt to blame Kunkel for not repeatedly requesting Brady material flips Brady—which imposes an affirmative obligation on the prosecutor—on its head. … The new evidence establishes that Kunkel did not engage in the conduct for which he was convicted,” their brief said.

During her oral argument, Kunkel’s attorney Diana Li said Narum’s ruling should be upheld and that the suppressed evidence “strikes at the heart of the state’s case” against Kunkel, and establishes his innocence.

“The State’s entire theory was that Kunkel murdered Fassett before 1:13 a.m. on August 2. The new evidence disproves that timeline multiple times over, and the district court found it more credible than the evidence against Kunkel,” the defense said in its brief.

Besides Li, who is based in New York City for the global law firm Cooley LLP, Kunkel is represented by Dane DeKrey of Ringstrom DeKrey, James Mayer of the Great North Innocence Project, Joshua Revesz, also of Cooley, and former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who is now a partner at Cooley.

The authors of the state’s appeal brief were Steinberg, Attorney General Drew Wrigley, Ramsey County State’s Attorney Daniel Howell and the state’s Solicitor General Phillip Axt, who was recently tapped to be a federal judge in North Dakota.

Tanner Ecker / The Bismarck Tribune

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Four supreme court justices and a surrogate judge filling in for Justice Mark Friese, who was disqualified from participating in the case, listened to the oral arguments for nearly an hour Thursday afternoon.

Chief Justice Lisa Fair McEvers, and Justices Douglas Bahr and Jerod Tufte interjected with several questions for Steinberg and Li, primarily focused on the timeliness of Kunkel’s petition, and whether the statute of limitations should apply.

Kunkel is currently in federal custody, awaiting an immigration court judge’s decision

about his status in the U.S. He came to the country from Germany with his mother when he was 7 but never became a U.S. citizen.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him in mid-August, the day after another district court judge agreed to release Kunkel

on a personal recognizance bond and electronic home monitoring pending the outcome of the state’s appeal of his conviction being overturned.

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – North Dakota’s Health and Human Services reported the state’s first West Nile-related death this year.

The person who died was 60 years old and lived in southwest North Dakota.

The virus usually peaks in late summer in North Dakota. So far this year, 25 cases of West Nile have been reported in 14 counties across the state. Last year, North Dakota had 86 cases and two deaths.

Health experts say most people infected with the virus have mild or no symptoms such as fever and headache. In more severe cases, the virus can cause fever, headache, stiff neck and an altered mental state.