Props to Chico firm

Chico-based firm VerTech Engineering has earned national recognition for its work on a state-of-the-art sustainable building.

Gish Family Apartments (pictured), a low-income housing/mixed-use building in the Bay Area, was named one of the 2009 Top Ten Green Projects by the American Institute of Architect’s Committee on the Environment.

The downtown San Jose facility, for which VerTech did the structural engineering, is the only affordable-housing development in the nation to receive both LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Homes and LEED for New Construction gold certification.

“Sustainability has become a buzz word in community development. We have studied and explored ways of making construction greener for several years as LEED was developing,” Mike Hubley, president of VerTech Engineering, said in a statement, “but now it’s like a new challenge with each project. How creative can we get with this? It’s exciting as new products and solutions seem to be coming out every day.”