Tres Birds soars using reclaimed materials

BOULDER — Since opening its doors in 2000, Tres Birds Workshop has focused on using reclaimed materials in a structural manner rather than simply as decoration.

The company includes energy-use data and a finished product that inspires inhabitants in its creations as well.

“We’ve been doing the same things all along,” said Mike M. Moore, founder and design principal. “The general public is just more ready for it now and actually asks for it.”

The continuing concentration on these factors is paying off, with a 222 percent increase in growth over the last three years. Tres Birds tallied revenue in 2008 of $180,000 and $580,000 in 2010. The increase places Tres Birds No. 4 on the Boulder County Business Report’s Mercury 100 list of fastest-growing private companies in Boulder and Broomfield counties with less than $2 million in annual revenue.

The five-person crew at Tres Birds includes Moore, Shawn Mather, architect; Greg Ingalls, project manager; Aaron Tweedie, project manager; and Susan Nuzum, office manager.

A step-by-step process that keeps a client’s budget in line with the project prevents disappointment and back-to-the-drawing-board time, Moore added as another feature that keeps his company strong.

“Since we build as well as design, we have a good understanding of costs and efficiencies,” he said. “Using this snapshot of cost analysis, we enable clients to make good decisions along the way rather than creating designs and giving them to the general contractor who then makes cuts.”

The ways Tres Birds keeps costs down includes inventing structural, wall and new ways of building systems that match client needs with what they have to spend.

“That’s what has been attracting people in recent years,” Moore said, describing the buildings they create as unique and more cost-efficient than off-the-shelf designs that use standard materials.

“Our work is themed to create positive experiences and to lower embodied energy in the process of making the buildings as well as lowering the operating energy of buildings,” Moore said.

Creating positive experiences in finished projects includes the amount of daylight that will stream in and the outside scenes employees will view through the windows.

Reclaimed materials used range from retired pallet racks and maple floors from railroad boxcars to bowling-alley lanes. “They’re high-quality materials that we purchase for low dollars,” he said.

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