Weatherford, Oklahoma
Seventy years of building in the same part of Oklahoma
Sawatzky Construction has been working out of Weatherford since 1954. That is a long time to stay in one place, and it comes with a particular kind of exposure: a firm that has built the bank, the church and the library in the towns around it cannot move away from its own work.
Design and build, under one contract
Sawatzky is a design/build general contractor, which means one contract covers both the drawings and the construction. Kevin Penner runs drafting out of the Weatherford office. The construction managers build from those sheets. When the drawing and the building disagree, there is nobody else to point at, and that is the whole argument for working this way.
It suits the work. Banks, churches, libraries and shops are well-understood building types. The value is not in inventing a new form, it is in getting the zoning of the spaces right, detailing the exterior so it survives western Oklahoma, and keeping the job moving around an owner who still has to operate.
It also suits the clients. A church building committee meets in the evenings. A library board has day jobs. Neither has the time to referee a disagreement between a designer and a builder, and one contract means one phone number.
Who runs the jobs
Six people, and you will deal with one of them directly
There is no account manager layer here. The person who runs your job is a construction manager whose name is on this list.
Don Blagg
Construction Manager
blaggd@sawatzkyconstruction.comMac McCune
Construction Manager
macmccune@sawatzkyconstruction.comRick Webb
Construction Manager
rickdwebb@sawatzkyconstruction.comDarryl Penner
Construction Manager
dpenner@sawatzkyconstruction.comKevin Penner
Drafting
webmaster@sawatzkyconstruction.comDebbie Sage
Office Manager
dsage@sawatzkyconstruction.com
Corn Bible Academy, March 2022
In March 2022 the office posted this to its Facebook page:
“So proud to work with all the great people from Corn Bible Academy. School dedication is tomorrow at 3 if you’d like to come see the building.”
That is a fair picture of how this firm operates. The buildings are for institutions in towns where the people who commissioned them and the people who built them shop in the same places. It is not a marketing position, it is just the consequence of staying put since 1954.