JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

Jason Kovac, a 2002 Virginia Tech architecture graduate, is now a project manager with Skanska. He gives a thumbs up to an employee working on Tech's Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Science building.

JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

Jason Kovac (right) works with Mike Clark, the virtual design and construction coordinator, in the job trailer the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science construction project at Tech.

| Greg Esposito

greg.esposito@roanoke.com, 381-1675

BLACKSBURG -- Jason Kovac can't seem to get away from Virginia Tech.

The 2002 architecture graduate has been working toward his master's degree in construction management at Tech while starting his career. He said he has one credit left, but that's not why he's spending time on the Blacksburg campus this summer.

Kovac is back at his alma mater as project manager for ICTAS II -- a 42,000-square-foot, $23 million building that will provide lab and office space for Tech's Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Science. Scheduled for completion in fall 2010, the work will keep him around for a while.

And if all goes well, Kovac will be on campus for three other projects his company, Skanska, is involved in at Tech. The construction company was awarded pre-construction contracts for an agriculture laboratory, student affairs building and the Virginia Bioinformatics building.

It's enough work to keep Kovac, who lives in Christiansburg, close to home for the next four years. And yes, he's bought season tickets for Hokie football.

Kovac worked on Tech's first solar house in 2002. The national competition between teams with solar-powered houses was good practice for some of the work he's doing now, he said. The ICTAS building will be LEED certified, and Kovac is in the process of creating a green trailer to use for the projects at the university, outfitted with sensors to turn lights off, sun tunnels and improved insulation to make it more energy efficient.

The trailer sits in the parking lot between Duck Pond Drive and Washington Street. Work began there in May. The project is still in its early stages -- deep foundation work and utilities.

"Basically everything nobody ever sees again," he said.

The site is easy to spot, with a giant red crane towering over it.

"You know, we built things on a smaller scale while I was here," he said. "And now you're coming in and doing $20 million, $30 million, $40 million buildings."

ICTAS is the first project Kovac has been manager on -- coordinating work among subcontractors, troubleshooting and communicating with the people who will eventually occupy the building. The fact that he's getting to work with people he'd previously only known as a student is pretty cool, he said.

"Actually coming back and visiting the architecture department and the building construction department and saying, 'Hey, I'm coming back to build buildings on campus.' I think a lot of professors ... they can see what they actually taught you."

While this is the first project Kovac has been paid to do at Tech, it's not the most important campus project he's worked on.

After the April 16, 2007, shootings, Kovac, who started a landscaping company when he was a student, volunteered to help out with the April 16 Memorial. Campus facilities did the electrical work and helped out with the landscaping while Kovac focused on installing the pavers -- the eight-inch-square concrete blocks that make the paths around the memorial. He had just started at Skanska and worked weekends over the summer of 2007 to get the memorial ready.

"You'd be out there laying brick and there'd be people just coming up crying," he said. "It was hard for me to get used to it at first because the initial memorial was still there. ... So you had to watch the interaction of people with the flowers, the stones that were there, et cetera, and you're trying to build the memorial at the same time. It was a little rough. But at the same time, they knew what you were trying to do for them. So they were grateful."

Matt Gart, the university's landscape architect, worked with Kovac on the project and has gotten to know him well since. He said he's impressed with his breadth of knowledge and work ethic.

"I don't know where he gets the energy," he said, laughing.