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BERRYMAN & HENIGAR TO PROVIDE BUILDING PLAN REVIEW, INSPECTIONS AT FORT LEWIS

SEATTLE, WA, June 19, 2002 -- Berryman & Henigar has been selected by Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR) to provide a wide variety of building plan review and civil engineering services for a new housing community and remodels at the U.S. Army's Fort Lewis military base in Washington. Gary Bourne, Pacific Northwest regional manager of Berryman & Henigar made the announcement.

Fort Lewis, 50 miles south of Seattle, was established in 1917 and is home to the U.S. Army's First Corps, commanded by Gen. James T. Hill. The 80,000-acre military base has a population of over 20,000.

Fort Lewis is one of four pilot programs (others include Fort Carson in Colorado; Fort Hood in Texas; and Fort Meade in Maryland) for the Army's Residential Communities Initiative (RCI), a housing privatization program developed and managed under the direction of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment. The program was mandated by Congress under the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) Act passed in 1996 and extended to December 2004.

In brief, the legislation allows military services to leverage appropriated housing funds and assets to attract private-sector capital and expertise for the purpose of building, operating, managing and maintaining family housing at military bases.

According to William Hill, Berryman & Henigar's Pacific Northwest Director of Community Development Services who will be serving as chief building official, the company will be providing building plan review; building, mechanical, plumbing, and electrical inspections; code consulting services; and civil engineering plan review and inspection services for EQR, which will be remodeling or replacing more than 3,200 housing units and constructing up to 345 new units in the next 10 years.

"We'll have a number of full-time inspectors on the base and we'll also be working closely with EQR and the Army to establish national building codes for the housing units," Hill said. "Eventually all military bases will adopt these codes which will help establish a national consistency and result in cost savings."

EQR is the nation's largest apartment owned and operated real estate investment trust (REIT). The publicly held, Chicago-based company owns and operates 220,000 housing units in 35 states.

Berryman & Henigar is a municipal professional services firm that serves Pacific Northwest communities from its Seattle office. Corporate headquarters are in San Diego, CA. The firm provides municipal engineering, public finance, asset management, community development, program and construction management, and e-Government services to public agencies nationwide. With a staff of more than 350 professionals and 12 offices nationwide, Berryman & Henigar is ranked as one of the top 250 consulting engineering companies by Engineering News-Record. Further information is available on the Web at www.bhiinc.com.

Return to: 2002 News Releases