The mainstream media often misses it. Not that they consciously ignore certain facts about construction projects, but the delivery method is often hard to come by in a typical report, whether design-build, design-bid-build or something else.
For sports facilities in particular — but also for any other such recreational venue — time is always of essence during construction, so the time factor is usually noted. “Opening day” is always a fixed time in space, with all team schedules always dependent upon one project in one part of the country. Cost is another item that gets a lot of attention. On top of that usually comes the news of conflict, problems, setbacks and oftentimes legal conundrums that often arise in the course of construction.
As a result, delivery method is proving crucial in the arenas, stadiums, sports venues and variety of recreation projects nationwide. Some of the biggest news surrounding these projects is that design-build is the only delivery method that can literally ensure a timely completion with little impact on — and often savings in — the project’s budget. The venues come in all shapes and sizes. Barton Malow Company and HKS Architects Inc., for example, were recently selected to build the Gwinnett Braves Baseball Stadium in Georgia. The $40 million stadium will open in 2009. But that’s just one example.
As these facilities rise from the rubble of their seemingly ancient predecessors, a now not-so-silent trend has taken hold. It’s design-build.
Two facilities in particular are anchoring the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. The Nationals Park, home to the Washington Nationals, and the New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey, which will support the New York Giants and New York Jets football teams, are turning some heads. But these design-build construction projects are part of the mainstream today, and they continue to emphasize the foundation that integrated project delivery has built over the last several years.
Capital Project
In Washington, the Nationals Park didn’t begin as design-build. In fact HOK Sport, the driving architecture force behind so many of these facilities, was hired by the city before the Clark Construction Group design-build team entered the picture.
“They started design directly for the city ... then [the city] put out the RFP for general contractors for kind of pre-construction,” says Matt Haas, project executive for Clark. “So, we bid against two other major players.”
At the time, Major League Baseball had a deal with the city that they be out of RFK Stadium by 2008. With time such an important factor, Clark received the pre-construction contract. The pre-construction was slated to last about six months, Haas says, with groundbreaking in March 2006.
Overall the project was supposed to be 25 months — a tight schedule according to Haas. “And then at some point through that pre-construction phase, they asked us to guarantee a contract, guarantee a price, and at the same time, they turned it into a design-build contract,” he says. “HOK, who we had worked with on dozens of projects and also a few sports projects ... made it kind of a natural fit to make it design-build. But also the city wanted to put the risk on the contractor. That was part of this whole deal, the structure of the deal was that the city would go into this $611 million cap and then basically not have any of the risk.” Clark’s relationship with its partners and with HOK made the project “a pretty good bet,” Haas says.
Relationships eliminated roadblocks throughout the project.
“Another thing we did that helped us get over that initial hurdle, or to speed things up early, we told the [Washington, D.C.] sports commission that we needed to award some early contracts way before they would normally be biddable,” Haas says. “We did this kind of expedited procurement process right in the beginning, even before we had a contract, bringing in the major subcontractors in the area and engaged in this design-assist competition to get the work.
This arrangement was with eight or 10 different entities, but it became about 50 percent of the cost of the work,” Haas says. But this eliminated a lot of risk in the early part of the process. The result was an efficient design, because the specialty contractors were able to work through constructability issues from the start. This also allowed for early material and equipment orders, which served as protection from escalation costs.
The project is mostly a steel structure. With many early hurdles out of the way, constructors were better able to deal with material lead times and get orders out for the structural steel since the project time line was so compressed. In addition, items such as the pre-cast elements for the parking garage can take nine months, according to Haas.
“There’s a lot of pressure up front just to get the design complete and then get the orders in,” he says. “Working all those details out before you even had a full design, you had to get these components — and that’s part of design-build — you had to get them coordinated as best you could, but you couldn’t do everything. You couldn’t coordinate every last piece. At some point you’ve got to draw the line and say, ‘we’re placing the order and we’ll adjust around [it].’” This was extremely important with the fixed end date.
“It’s just part of the nature of the beast [with] design-build, that you don’t have all the information you need when you start and you’ve got [to] really just use your expertise and your past performance to get you through it,” Haas says.
Some other on-site innovations helped the process as well. For example, they used a computer-aided model to do structural design, which allowed for an early steel order. “I can’t even tell you how much coordination went into designing the groundwater system beneath the playing field,” Haas adds. “It was like a year and a half of just pulling our hair out, trying to get it perfect. ... We knew we had to plant the grass by November, so we had a short window and we knew we had to get in there with the most efficient design and construction.”
For drainage, they ended up with a two-foot layer of gravel with some piping, what Haas calls a “gravel blanket,” for the ground water, which became one of the projects particular innovations. “Then we had a system right above it that takes care of the rainwater. Above that you’ve got irrigation,” Haas says. “Even if there was flooding in the area, I think you’d be able to play baseball sooner than you’d be able to drive on the street.”
Another thing that also saved some time in the beginning was building the main concourse — even though there’s also a basement/service level. “We actually poured that concrete service level after we poured the main concourse,” Haas says.
Aesthetics didn’t get short shrift either. “I think it’s most important that the stadium fits into the community first — and that’s just the exterior. What really matters to a lot of people is once you get inside ... you’ve got good sight lines and exciting visual,” Haas says. “[For] this one, the architect had the vision that it fit with kind of the monuments and federal look of the city. The openness and the wide concourses has been very important to the city, especially coming out of the dungeons of RFK.”
Jets and Giants
Up I-95, quite a ways from the “dungeons of RFK” and the Nationals Park, the New Meadowlands Stadium project is moving forward at a rapid pace and will open in 2009. The project, being built by Skanska USA Building Inc., reveals even more design-build flexibility. Jim Whitaker, vice president at Skanska, notes that, “It was actually two different projects for two different teams on two different sites. Then, two projects merged into one. Once the New York Giants and New York Jets combined forces, design-build became the delivery method of choice to guarantee schedule certainty and cost containment.”
A big challenge for this project was that New York City had or has six major sports facility projects under construction at one time. “The marketplace for this level of design and construction talent was very tight,” Whitaker says. “Plus, the site is a brownfield redevelopment immediately adjacent the existing Giants stadium, literally but feet away.”
The project’s technological advances to improve and benefit the fans who will attend events at the facility are perhaps the most important. “The stadium combines an interesting blend of project ownership in a hot construction market on a challenging site with high-end technologies,” Whitaker says.
One of the biggest challenges is bringing together experiences of the fan bases for each team, “brands, cultures, design teams, and so forth has been an exciting opportunity to blend into one mammoth construction project,” Whitaker says.
This is nothing new for Skanska. “From experience, Skanska knew that key stakeholder partnerships were critically important,” Whitaker says. “For instance, 20,000-plus tons of structural steel was required to be designed, detailed, fabricated, delivered and erected in lock-step precision and with great speed.”
Skanska USA Building joined its sister company, Skanska USA Civil, to bring top-flight structural steel experience to the project. “The positive synergies of sister companies with combined horsepower — buildings and heavy — were very advantageous,” Whitaker says. “Secondly, Skanska immediately began close coordination with the entire design team that had been underway for months prior to Skanska’s engagement. Meetings begat more meetings so that Skanska clearly understood the owner’s objectives through the eyes of its designers.”
As a result, the project is months ahead of schedule. The design was coordinated with procurement and field operations to get the most bang for the buck. The experienced teams also had great success preparing the site and with its foundation work, which allowed the steel construction to begin quickly.
One of the biggest technological successes was Skanska using “radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking system to manage the production, delivery and installation of pre-cast concrete stadia pieces,” Whitaker says. “From the casting plant to construction site is a choreographed sequence of activities that ensure every step is monitored. 3-D graphics color code the status of pieces, whether in design ... production [and] shipping.”
In the end, Whitaker says, Skanska uses its projects as teaching tools, and the New Meadowlands is no exception. “Without question, the big three: schedule certainty, cost containment and quality assurance of design with quality control of construction,” Whitaker says, were, and are, crucial.
Sport and Rec Roster
Design-build is beyond making inroads in sport and recreation facility construction. While we couldn’t include every facility, DATELINE presents some of the latest and most advanced such venues across the nation. This is the first time, not the last, in which we hope to present an annual catalog of the ever-increasing variety of design-build venues.
Design-build is beyond making inroads in sport and recreation facility construction. While we couldn’t include every facility, DATELINE presents some of the latest and most advanced such venues across the nation. This is the first time, not the last, in which we hope to present an annual catalog of the ever-increasing variety of design-build venues.
Project: Alwin O. and Dorothy Highers Athletic Complex and Simpson Athletics and Academic Center
Construction dates: June 2007-December 2008
Cost: $25 million
Design-build team: The Beck Group (contractor) and Sparks Sports Inc. (architect)
Specialty Contractors: n/a
Activities for which the facility was built: Football operations, athletics administration and an academic center.
Capacity: 96,000 square feet
Teams the facility supports: Baylor Bears Football Team
Description: The Beck Group is heading up design and construction services, in conjunction with Sparks Sports, on the $25-million Alwin O. and Dorothy Highers Athletics Complex and the Simpson Athletics and Academic Center at Baylor University. The facilities will integrate the Baylor athletics department and football program into the overall campus environment for the first time in the modern era.
Located on University Parks Drive near the Baylor Marina, the Highers Athletics Complex will feature three football practice fields, two with natural surfaces and one with artificial turf. The roughly 100,000-square-foot Simpson Athletics and Academic Center brings to campus functions previously housed at Floyd Casey Stadium, such as the main athletics training room, equipment room, football team locker room and weight room, as well as administrative offices, the football office, meeting rooms and an academic center for all student-athletes.
Project: PNC Park
Construction dates: June 1999-April 2001
Cost: $222 million
Design-build team: PJ Dick/Barton Malow, construction managers; HOK Sport/LD Astorino, architects (HOK, design; LDA, architect of record)
Specialty contractors: M-E Engineers, MEP; Thornton Tomasetti, structural; Code Consultants Inc., codes and life safety; WJHW, audio/visual, acoustical
Sports for which stadium was built: Major League Baseball
Capacity: 37,900
Teams the facility supports: Pittsburgh Pirates
Description: PNC Park is one of America’s most intimate ballparks. Located at the foot of the Roberto Clemente bridge in Pittsburgh, the stadium offers spectacular views of the city. It is recognized as one of baseball’s most accessibly-friendly ballparks and received the Design-Build Award from the Master Builders Association.
Project: University of Hawaii Special Events Arena
Construction dates: December 1992-August 1994
Cost: $32.24 million
Cost savings: By converting to design-build, the project met its budget goal.
Design-build team: Charles Pankow Builders, Ltd, Design-Builder; Heery International, Architect; Kauahikaua & Chun Architects, Architect; AM Structural Engineer, Ltd., Structural Engineer; Wilson Okamoto & Associates, Civil Engineer; Southland Industries, HVAC Engineer; Sasco Electric, Electrical Engineer
Specialty contractors: Temco (dome construction)
Sports for which the stadium was built: Men’s and Women’s Volleyball, Men’s and Women’s Basketball
Capacity: 10,031
Teams the facility supports: University of Hawaii Wahines, University of Hawaii Warriors
Description: The Special Events Arena was Hawaii’s first public-sector design-build contract award. Design-build was selected only after the original design, completed in the traditional manner, significantly exceeded the project budget. The competition format allowed the Pankow team to take an innovative approach to producing the seating and structural system. The method chosen proved to be much less expensive than the original design with no sacrifice of capacity or quality. The success of this project inspired the State of Hawaii to continue to use design-build procurement on important public projects.
The constricted site required an innovative solution for fabrication and staging: Pankow’s innovative use of “tilt-up” technology for on-site pre-cast beams instead of cast-in-place members. The project was delivered for the lump-sum guarantee price, two months ahead of schedule.
Project: AT&T Park
Construction dates: December 1997-April 2000
Cost: $291 million
Design-build team: Hunt Construction Group, construction manager; HOK Sport, design architect; Michael Willis & Associates, associate architect
Specialty contractors: M-E Engineers, MEP; Thornton Tomasetti, structural; Rolf Jensen & Associates, codes/life safety; WJHW, audio/visual
Sports for which stadium was built: Major League Baseball
Capacity: 40,700
Teams the facility supports: San Francisco Giants
Description: The site for AT&T Park has it all: San Francisco’s skyline, the hills of the East Bay and vivid ocean sunsets over the Golden Gate. Upon arrival, visitors are greeted with a composition of steel, concrete and brick. Heroic in scale and proportion, the ballpark’s rugged face recaptures the spirit of the grand old game and the South of Market context. Flanked by clock towers, this face engages the city street network and the neighborhood’s scale. Recalling the language of the ubiquitous waterfront pier buildings, larger than life portals allow the public to glimpse the verdant playing field without a ticket.
Project: New Busch Stadium
Construction dates: December 2003-April 2006
Cost: $365 million
Design-build team: Hunt, construction manager; HOK Sport, design architect, HOK, architect of record
Specialty contractors: Bliss and Nyitray, structural; M-E Engineers, MEP; WJHW, audio/visual; David Mason, civil; Lerch Bates, transportation; Code Consultants Inc., codes
Sports for which stadium was built: Major League Baseball
Capacity: 47,900
Teams the facility supports: St. Louis Cardinals
Description: Only 75 percent of the ballpark was slated to open by April 2006; the design-build process elevated the construction schedule so that 85 percent of the project was done by April, which allowed the team to collect additional revenues that they hadn’t figured in the business plan. The St. Louis Cardinals jumped on their chance to have a new ballpark that could showcase St. Louis’ remarkable downtown skyline. However, one challenge existed — the new Busch Stadium was to overlap the old one by 25 percent — and the old Busch Stadium was not to be demolished until just six months prior to the new ballpark opening. Using the design-build-bridging method on the project saved time and money to get the new ballpark opened by April 2006.
The Cardinals required a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) at the completion of design development documents. The Cardinals contracted with HOK Sport to be their design architect and bridge with a future design-build team. The builder also contracted with HOK’s St. Louis office to provide construction documents and to complete the project. The builder assumed a single point of responsibility for all design and construction concerns once the GMP was set.
Project: Jacksonville Municipal Stadium (formerly Alltel Stadium)
Construction dates: January 1994-September 1995
Cost: $129,081,655
Design-build team: Haskell, HOK Sport, and Huber, Hunt & Nichols joint venture
Sports for which the stadium was built: NFL Football
Capacity: 73,000
Teams the facility supports: Jacksonville Jaguars
Description: In 1993 the National Football League awarded Jacksonville an expansion team franchise. Haskell was retained to provide pre-construction and construction services to demolish the old Gator Bowl facility and build a new 73,000-seat, state-of-the-art facility to serve as the Jacksonville Jaguars’ home playing field and corporate headquarters. The facility had to be ready for the start of the 1995 season, leaving Haskell only 20 months to construct the new facility. In August 1995, the stadium was completed ahead of schedule, thus ensuring ample preparation time prior to the inaugural Jaguars’ game. This was the most aggressive schedule ever achieved for an NFL stadium at the time.
The cast-in-place concrete structure with integral pre-cast/prestressed components required drilling 2,200 pilings to depths of 50 feet. Poured-in-place caps, grade beams, columns, slabs and rakers required more than 36,000 cubic yards of concrete and was followed by the placing of 2,753 pre-cast concrete pieces.
Project: University of Phoenix Stadium
Construction dates: July 2003-August 2006
Cost: $455 million
Design-build team: Hunt Construction Group, cm; HOK Sport and Eisenman Associates, architect
Specialty contractors: Walter P Moore, structural; Evans, Kuhn and Assoc., civil; M-E Engineers, MEP; Uni-Systems, roof mechanization; Urban Earth Design, landscape; PMK Associates, audio/visual
Sports for which stadium was built: NFL football
Capacity: 63,500; expandable to 72,800
Teams the facility supports: Arizona Cardinals
Description: HOK Sport, in collaboration with Eisenman Architects, created an icon in the desert of Arizona. The new multipurpose stadium, home of NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, occupies 25 acres and features a moveable stadium floor. When the grass slides outside the stadium, the underneath features a 152,000-square-foot concrete floor with an embedded utility grid that will allow the facility host various events like trade and consumer shows, conventions, concerts, motor sports and rodeos. The facility also hosted Super Bowl XLII in 2008. Additionally, the stadium’s retractable roof creates a 100,000-square-foot opening to accommodate the desert climate. The facility is one of Business Week magazine’s 10 most impressive global sports structures and is the first facility with a retractable field in North America. HOK Sport contracted with the owner through GMP, then contracted with the owner after scope and price were set. The builder held one-third of all contracts.
Project: Paramount Theater
Construction dates: June 2003-November 2003
Cost: $1.3 million
Design-build team: M. A. Mortenson Company with Brendle APV
Specialty contractors: BCER, electrical, mechanical, structural; MTECH, mechanical design assist; Elight, electrical; Nothhaft, fire protection
Activity for which the facility was built: Ballet
Capacity: 1,870
Groups the facility supports: Colorado Ballet
Description: Throughout its 75-year history, the Paramount Theater has been utilized for movies and live performances. The theater came into the care of Kroenke Sports Enterprises (KSE) in 2002, at which time they began to plan innovative ways to restore the vitality of this grand old theater.
One such innovation was an opportunity with the Colorado Ballet after the group was displaced by a massive renovation at their existing venue. This required renovation of the rigging capacity of the existing theater, lengthening of the stage and changes to accommodate a depressed orchestra pit. Dressing room capacity was expanded and access from the new dressing area was improved with an upgraded and fully enclosed and air conditioned passageway. Existing bar facilities on the mezzanine level were in need of renovation as well.
The tightly knit team of designers and constructors were able to make decisions that incorporated both design issues and constructability issues in a manner that met the user needs that evolved throughout the project, the schedule constraints and the budget. A more traditional construction delivery system could not have been as flexible to the evolution of the user group needs, nor could it have accomplished this project in the time allowed.
Project: Daytona International Speedway (Improvement Project)
Construction dates: July 2004-January 2005
Cost: $56,343,829.00
Design-build team: Haskell
Sports for which the facility was built: Motor sports
Capacity: 168,000
Teams the facility supports: NASCAR
Description: In January 2004, International Speedway Corporation (ISC) approached Haskell about an infield renovation project at Daytona International Speedway. ISC wanted to update the historic track by completely rebuilding all of the garage and infield structures, filling in a portion of Lake Lloyd to create a premium RV parking area and adding a new access tunnel underneath the track to accommodate race-car trailers, heavy equipment, trucks and RV traffic. Any one of the three projects would have been a challenge to design and construct during the time between the Pepsi 400 race event on July 4, 2004, and the Daytona 500 in February of 2005. Combining all three projects into a single-source design-build contract was the only way to accomplish this “fast-track” feat.
Project: Old Dominion University Foreman Field Football Complex and Parking Garage, Norfolk, Va.
Completion Date: September 2009
Design-build team: Old Dominion University, owner; S.B. Ballard Construction Company, general contractor; Clark Nexsen and Ellerbe Beckett, architect; S.B. Ballard Construction Company, concrete contractors; Metromont, pre-cast garage contractor
Description: The addition of a game day building/luxury suites and parking garage facility at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., includes a game day building with luxury suites, loge seating, press box and meeting and exam rooms. The parking garage will consist of five levels, with one on grade and the other four elevated. The parking structure will total 216,361 square feet and include 724 parking spaces. Visit www.sbballard.com for live camera footage of in-progress construction and the video prepared for the project presentation.
Project: INVESCO Field at Mile High
Construction dates: April 1999-August 2001
Design-build team: Turner/HNTB Joint Venture; HNTB Architecture, design architect; Fentress Architects, associate architect; Bertram A. Bruton, associate architect; Turner Construction Company; Empire Construction Services; Alvarado Construction. Walter P. Moore & Associates and The Sheflin Group, structural engineers; Kumar and Associates Inc., Geotechnical Engineering; HNTB and J.F. Sato and Associates Civil Engineering; M.E. Engineers Inc.; Western Industrial Contractors; HNTB and Compositions, interior design; Pelton Marsh Kinsella, TV broadcast and acoustics; Civitas and The Office of Kim Wilson, urban planning and landscape; Millennium, turf/irrigation.
Cost: $404 million
Capacity: 76,125
Teams the facility supports: Denver Broncos, Denver Outlaws (lacrosse), Colorado Rapids (soccer), high school and collegiate sporting events, concerts, special events, trade shows and civic events.
Description: INVESCO Field at Mile High was designed as a stadium within a park to encourage pre-game activities. Utilizing design-build, the team was able to provide the client a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) for the project budget. HNTB joint-ventured with contractor Turner Construction Company (Turner/HNTB joint venture) to deliver a signature stadium on a tight schedule that exceeded the expectations of the client, team owner, fans and the Denver community. Design-build assured the stadium would open in time for the 2001 NFL pre-season. Construction began during the design phase, and the project was completed in 27 months, two weeks ahead of schedule and $4.5 million under budget.