Story & Photos by Lane Brugman
With CSU’s third football season on Sonny Lubick Field coming to a close against Boise State on Friday November 29th, it’s a perfect time to reflect on Canvas Stadium. The stadium, which started as a highly controversial project is now the verifiable home of CSU’s football program and an integral part of the Fort Collins, Colorado community. It feels like it’s always been there and as such, it’s easy to forget about what an achievement building Canvas Stadium was.
Forgotten is the fact that the Canvas Stadium was the fastest stadium of its size ever built*. Forgotten is a project brought in on-budget and delivered on-time – a significant achievement for a large public project. Forgotten is the fact that the naming rights deal for the stadium was the third largest collegiate contract ever. Forgotten is the complexity of building a multi-purpose stadium. Inside the eastern walls are an alumni center, office space, and lecture halls. Top-of-the-line hydrotherapy pools, locker rooms, meeting rooms, retail space and an expansive weight room occupy the area under the west concourse. The tower, that now stands as the tallest building in Fort Collins, holds press boxes, conference rooms, banquet space and suites. The stadium was designed and built to be everything the university needed and it has delivered. More important and more telling than any of these facts though, is the story the stadium.
Construction is too frequently viewed as a nuisance and a means to an end. The orange cones, flaggers and caution tape are inconveniences to regular life. The name of the architect usually sticks but forgotten are the incredible human stories that occur beyond the fences.
I want to change that.
For two years, I worked on the stadium project day in and day out as a member of the general contractor’s team. I want to share the history of effort, sacrifice, stress, pain and pride that went into building a stadium faster than anyone in the world had before.* After reading this, I hope that you’ll find a deeper appreciation not only Canvas Stadium, but for the work and sacrifice that goes into buildings everywhere.
The story of the stadium is best told on a cold February morning in 2017.
IN THE DARKNESS
5:55 AM on a Wednesday – February 2017
As we scamper down the sidewalk, the squeaks of dry snow compressing under our steel toe boots is the only sound we hear. The campus is still asleep. It’s only four degrees and being outside just a minute and a half, my cheeks feel rigid and numb. I trace the foot prints of the project’s superintendents, foremen, project managers and other construction engineers as I near the southwest gate. Starting the third day of the week, I’ve already logged 26 hours on the job. At this point in the project, the work days start and end in the dark.
Then the quiet stillness of a dark, cloudless sky starts coming to life. Diesel powered generators slowly crank over and the bulbs they power, flicker on and start burning. Their light reflects off the fresh blanket of snow and throws our shadows across the street. There, the Pi Beta Phi house sits. If the sorority sisters were up at this hour, we must look like a line of indiscernible miners waddling down the street with our headlamps bobbing. Our figures casting long shadows of the community suffering of yet another freezing morning. But they aren’t up, nor will they be for another two hours.
I envy those ‘kids’, especially on mornings like this. I walk past the Authorized Personnel Only sign and enter the construction site. I want to be back in college, free from the stress and anxiety that now dominate my life. I was a student just two years ago and so were several other construction engineers onsite. We sat together in construction management classes, graduated together and now found ourselves working with each other on the defining project of our university: the on-campus stadium.
We beamed with pride as we announced to our former classmates, “We’re on the stadium job.”
Little did the 35,000 Colorado State University students know of the sacrifices being made by the men and women inside that frozen fence. They don’t know that the pace has been relentless. That the project is a runaway freight train that no one can quite control. And that even still, it needs to move faster. We’re behind schedule.
Crossing the chain link fence, the faded primary colors of all-terrain fork lifts, skid steers, boom lifts and excavators lay lifeless in untouched snow drifts. Their tracks and knobby tires left imprinted yesterday’s mud. That earth, now frozen and covered in an obscuring layer of white snow, makes rolling an ankle a real possibility with each step. Just getting to work is an effort.
The construction site lies in the center of Fort Collins, which is a small city of 180,000 nestled at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. As the state’s most demanding project, we exhausted the labor pool in Northern Colorado. So the majority of the project’s personnel have to drive 70 miles north each morning from the Denver metro area. In these snowy conditions the journey is at the very least, a 90-minute white knuckle affair. Powerful winds rip across the highway and create white outs. Windshield wipers wave frantically trying to clear the blowing snow. Work trucks loaded with tools and materials, suddenly float as their tires lose grip on icy bridges. Other times, they hit walls of snow trying to pass swaying tractor trailers. Multiple cars are left abandoned in the median or off the shoulder, their veering tire tracks still visible in the snow. Even so, we speed. No matter the conditions, we are expected to be on time to the daily 6:00AM morning coordination meeting. We don’t want to be late.
Garrett, the general superintendent of the project, may afford us two or three minutes late given the circumstances, but after that we’re going to get yelled at. Getting your ass chewed at 6:00 in the morning in front of everyone, is a bad way to start the day. I’ve already had that happen twice and the fear of it happening again pulses through my legs as I knock the snow off my boots and hurry down a corridor and into the building, a temporary door made of plywood slams shut behind me. I jog the last few steps into our meeting location. It’s a vast, windowless grey room with concrete in all directions. Harsh fluorescent lights buzz above us and reveal the stout structural components required for a football stadium that will hold 41,000.
I take off my safety glasses which fogged up immediately upon entering the building kept warm by temporary heaters. I find an empty folding chair at a plastic table where several of my friends are sitting. There isn’t much conversation in the rest of the room and the blank faces show exhaustion.
“Morning dude,” I say to my friend Tanner. We graduated two years apart from CSU and had developed a strong friendship.
“How’d you sleep?” He asks.
“Well,” I respond, “until 3:30 this morning.”
“The Fear got ya, eh?” Tanner replies, cracking a smile.
The Fear is what our group of engineers refer to as the anxiety fits that, with increasing frequency and intensity, surface in the middle of the night and starve us of rest. Good sleep is scarce.
“Ya man,” I say as I rub my eyes, “today is going to be rough.”
HOW’D WE GET HERE?
The new stadium project was the result of discussions dating back to 2011 on how to move on from Hughes Stadium. Hughes was built in 1968 and sat two miles west of the campus. It was small and antiquated but the community around Fort Collins enjoyed the tradition of the stadium and liked that it had ample parking and room for tailgates. It was the status quo. In 2013 the university proposed feasibility studies for a $200 – 250 million on-campus stadium. During the age of rising tuition, stagnant salaries and a growing student debt crisis, the on-campus stadium became a highly controversial topic.
The project engulfed the city of Fort Collins and CSU’s campus.
As discussions advanced, everyone in town had an opinion on it. Urban design classes at the university focused project’s on where to put the on-campus stadium. Business classes debated whether or not the new facility would work financially. Residents wrote concerned letters about the impact to traffic and parking. An organized voice against the project argued it would be an egregious use of public funds for a mediocre football team. Students worried that it would increase tuition. The project engulfed the city of Fort Collins and CSU’s campus.
The fact was, something needed to be done. Hughes Stadium needed tens of millions of dollars of repairs and compliance upgrades, but that kind of money wouldn’t fix fundamental issues with the facility’s design, functionality and location. It wasn’t a sound investment.
Enter Dr. Tony Frank. The CSU President for almost a decade, Dr. Frank had risen to near legendary status on campus and was the most respected man in the Fort Collins community. He leveraged his position as a visionary leader in support of the on-campus stadium. He had diligently reviewed financial projections and answered the tough questions that the community had. It instilled a lot of confidence in everyone around that Dr. Frank was such a constant positive force for the project. He believed in and sold the idea that bringing the football stadium home, back to the heart of campus, would be the best opportunity to engage alumni, increase donations and provide the university with a true game day experience that had never been there previously.
There was even discussion among the athletics department that the new stadium could help CSU move on from the small Mountain West Conference to a Power Five conference like the Big Ten or Big Twelve. The TV revenue and national attention from a conference switch would be huge. The football team had a ten-win season in 2014 and went to bowl games three years in a row (2013 – 2015). A sparkling new stadium and state-of-the-art facilities would attract better recruits and the program could take the next step. More than anything though, the stadium would serve as a tangible coronation of the state university’s rise to national recognition. The rapid improvement of academic excellence and growth of enrollment, research and endowment fund, coupled with a successful delivery of a campus changing project would seal Tony Frank’s sterling reputation. There was a LOT riding on this project going well. But even from the earliest stages, there was a significant problem.
GET THE MONEY AND GO
To make all of the financials ‘pencil’, the stadium needed to host the 2017 football season. The problem was that without confirmation that the project was a go, the architect (Populous) and general contractor (Mortenson) had been in holding patterns for several years. Populous, one of the most prominent architecture firms for sports and entertainment venues, had provided initial renderings and conceptual designs but without a significant budget, had been unable to move forward with the detailed design. Mortenson, one of the top three sports builders in the country and the company I worked for, had given ball park construction cost projections but was unable to conduct in-depth construction planning. Mortenson had however, guaranteed the project wouldn’t exceed $220 million, but that figure would only hold through 2017 due to construction cost escalation. Then, in March of 2015, the university sold the $239 million dollars in loans ($19 million was set aside to pay off interest on the loans).
The sale made the project real and suddenly the pedal was now flat on the floor.
Populous and their web of consultants, engineers and specialty design partners now had only eight months to take the project from conceptual designs to a full, construction set of documents. That is extremely hard to do with such a large facility that caters to so many user groups: athletics, alumni, academics, event planning, concessionaires and broadcast companies. The complexity also meant there was a much broader band of code intricacies that had to be reviewed and clarified. Done correctly, this process takes great deal of coordination, over many months. But we didn’t have the time.
The project’s key partners knew this from the start. The design of the stadium would have to overlap with construction. There was no alternative if we had any chance at making the 2017 season. So Populous broke the project into packages: civil and enabling work and foundations would be first, then superstructure, followed by exterior and interior details. This process is not uncommon but the amount of overlap, the number of critical scopes left without details, the lack of thorough code review and severely limited time frame made the CSU stadium the most condensed project in the country.
What the project did benefit from, however, was the fact that we were building a brand new football stadium for Colorado State University. We are after all, in America, and who doesn’t love football? A lot of alumni from CSU’s construction management program were now in leadership roles in companies across the state. So even with an incomplete design, a schedule that promised to be full throttle all the time, trade partners from around Colorado lined up to bid on the project. Most wanted to be a part of their alma mater’s defining project. Some just didn’t want their competitors to get the bragging rights that come with high profile projects. Whether it was excitement or pride, in their zeal to be a part of their alma mater’s defining project many overlooked the special challenges stadiums present. So Mortenson got to work drafting strict contracts for key trade partners using incomplete designs. Groundbreaking would be in the fall of 2015 and construction would last just twenty months. With such a tight schedule, the construction team expected that the design would be completed by early 2016 and that changes would be limited after that.
That never happened.
The result was that the Colorado State University Multi-Purpose Stadium would be the fastest stadium ever built and the design would always be evolving. By the time of the first game there would be more than 75 drawing issuances. Even in the time driven sports construction world, where many remodel projects only have an off-season to complete, we often heard,
“That schedule is insane.”
PUSHED TO THE EDGE
As Garrett gives the big picture overview of site operations for the day, I rub my hands together for warmth. The feeling already left my fingers during the hurried walk to the meeting. I scan the room and am surprised to see almost all of the 40 management staff made it on time. Their faces reveal exhaustion and stress. Everyone in the 6AM coordination meeting is under immense pressure.
Looking down at my coffee, I’m sad to see I’ve sloshed out a third of the cup and what’s left, is no longer hot. Some of the powdered creamer did not dissolve in my rushed, plastic spoon stir job. The lumps swirl at the top of the cup and remind me what my quality of my existence has become. I drink it anyways. It’s nothing more than fuel and we’ve been burning a lot of it.
The pace of the meeting picks up as Garrett hands it off to one of our seven area superintendents.
“OK, so once the sparkies (electricians) are cleaned up in Area B, you got to hit it hard,” Mark, says to the plumbing foreman, sitting at a table towards the back of the room.
“When will you be done Bill?” He asks the superintendent of the electrical contractor.
“We’ll be out of there by 9,” Bill says “if we can get some time with the elevator this morning.”
Bill is one of the most respected leaders on the project and unlike many, his responses conveniently lay out what he needs to be successful.
“Mike, did you hear that?” Mark ask Mike, verifying our foreman who manages the elevator takes note.
“Copy that” Mike replies.
“Lane is the overhead re-inspection called for Area A?” Marks asks me.
We had failed an inspection in a critical area yesterday because of an improperly installed damper. Nothing could move forward until it was corrected and signed off.
“Yes,” I reply quickly, “He should be looking at it first thing this morning.”
The main inspector is everyone’s favorite nemesis at this point in the project. He is extremely thorough in his inspections and knows the code inside and out. That is his job of course, but the distaste comes from how he takes pride in finding problems. It’s almost as if he is excited to uncover our failings.
“Is it ready?” Mark followed up, still looking at me.
“Yes.” I replied back confidently.
Inside, I was worried. I didn’t have time to see that the issue had been corrected with my own eyes. I took the word of a trade partner’s quality control guy. I trusted him but was still uneasy. Mark’s attention goes elsewhere in the room and I’m relieved.
“How many guys do you have today, Juan?” Mark said, quickly directing his attention to Juan, the framing and drywall foreman for Level 3.
“Twelve,” Juan replies.
“You had eight yesterday, so you have four more coming today?” Mark asks skeptically.
Mark needs to make up five days of schedule on his floor but the days behind are growing, not shrinking. Garrett has been pushing him hard. Mark needs every drywall finisher he can get his hands on as the men and women who tape and mud the are very valuable at this point of the job. This is why Mark knows Juan’s manpower so accurately.
“I don’t know,” Juan replies.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Mark asks quickly, obviously agitated with the response.
“That’s just what the office told me,” Juan admits.
“You NEED 20!” Mark yells, as his frustration boils over. The sound immediately grabbing everyone’s attention in the room. He’s not usually one to yell.
“You were supposed to be out of Area B yesterday!” Mark says as he slaps a blown up floor plan highlighted in yellow and orange.
“We’re going the wrong FUCKING way!” Mark yells at Juan, more in frustration of the situation rather than personal malice.
“I know,” Juan concedes “I’ve got my hands tied.”
We all sit silently on edge as Mark collects himself and continues on with the rest of his floor’s activities. Commitments in higher level schedule meetings were not being kept, and these very intense, face-to-face flare ups were the result. They are almost a daily occurrence now. It hadn’t always been so bad.
TAKE PRIDE IN PAIN
At the beginning of the job, we were confident we could win. That our team could conquer the job. After all, we had several key team members that had just finished the company’s biggest win – the Minnesota Vikings new home – US Bank Stadium. The venue for Super Bowl 52 was just 15 minutes down the road from Mortenson’s headquarters and was a feather in the company’s cap. It was an extremely challenging structure that required equipment from all over the world. A project that employed cutting edge materials and still completed on budget and 6 weeks ahead of schedule. At $900 million, it was the company’s largest contract ever fulfilled. We anticipated our ‘little’ stadium would be challenging, but straightforward. It was nothing close to the size of US Bank Stadium and half our team were ‘Sports guys’.
The Sports guys were the hotshots of the company, making big money traveling from city to city, building huge arenas and stadiums across the country, then pivoting their life to tackle another landmark project. They were specialized and knew the complexities of sports projects. They ran high performing teams and considered it a luxury not to have to work with trade partners over and over again. They were much more aggressive and more frequent in their use of the not-so-friendly contract language than we were used to in Colorado.
The culture shift was evident from the first day I stepped onsite. An absolutely overwhelming Monday in January 2016 ended with a two-hour staff meeting – yes two full hours. The meeting left no doubt that everyone knew the project was going to be brutal and what ensued felt more like a testosterone fueled military beat down, than a corporate meeting.
The senior project manager Jack, was a former Marine who had worked his way through the field ranks to rise to his position at the top of the project. His hair was still within ‘regs’ and his posture admirable. He was stern and wouldn’t be questioned. He and Garrett sat at the front of the table and commanded the room.
“Where are we with this?” Jack would say to someone on our team.
“I don’t know; I’ll have to check back.” They’d remark.
“Why don’t you know?” He’d shoot back directly.
“I asked for that last week,” He’d say not waiting for a reply, “it needs to be on my desk tomorrow morning.”
This was an order, not a suggestion.
His counterpart, our general superintendent Garrett, was one of the youngest and brightest stars in the company. He had been an outside linebacker in college and for reasons I couldn’t figure out, had a sizable chip on his shoulder. He had just come off of the Vikings Stadium and he found that the sports construction world fit his aggressiveness well. He was cocky and arrogant, which rubbed many people the wrong way, but he could back it up. He was extremely smart and an adroit leader. So there it was, the pairing that would guide the culture onsite was two ultra-competitive, alpha males with robust egos.
We had been dealt a brutal project but we weren’t going to lose.
They quickly set the tone onsite. Things would black and white. Nothing would be sugarcoated. We had been dealt a brutal project but we weren’t going to lose. We were going to maintain a small, talented team and needed to be on top of our shit. We would be surrounded by high performers and we’d be the bad boys (and girls) of the company. We may get beat down and yelled at our internal meetings but we’d show a united front to everyone else. If you didn’t like it, you could leave.
“Read the contract!” Jack would tell us every week.
“Know the schedule!” Garrett would repeat.
Both Jack and Garrett were strong leaders and below their level, our team was a meritocracy. They countered their usually abrasive style with belief. They entrusted an enormous amount of responsibility in us and offered career development in return for the suffering that would ensue. We felt that we were being groomed to be leaders of company. We’d be training for bigger decisions on larger projects. If we could handle the pressure, we’d swim. If not, we’d sink and we’d be replaced.
It certainly was not an environment for everyone but I enjoyed it. I got word that I was assigned to the stadium just two months after graduating CSU. In fact, I was traveling in Malaysia when the email came through at a bus station.
‘What an opportunity’ I thought to myself as the tops of the Petronas Towers, my favorite buildings in the world, reached over the Kuala Lumpur skyline. I felt that my dreams were coming true.
This was my chance to prove myself, just as my parents had in the medical field and my brothers had in the military and professional worlds. The company and everyone involved in the job, knew how challenging it would be. So if I could prove that I had it on this stage, I would be in the top-echelon of the construction world.
I knew I was developing at a similarly maniacal pace.
So even as the project enveloped me in a wave of overwhelming new, I knew I was developing at a similarly maniacal pace. The 55 hour weeks were worthwhile because watching the building ‘come out of the ground’ was so rewarding. The project changed so rapidly and our Mortenson carpenters and concrete finishers were pushing the structure forward. It was hard work and long hours, but we were hitting our dates and were proud that our expertise was on full display.
Some weeks were incredible. On more than one occasion, the rebar installers, known onsite as ‘rod busters’, worked into the night to finalize rebar details. They were led by Diego, was considered the best rod buster foreman in the state. Our crews would then wrap up any loose end details on the formwork and re-check the anchor bolts before cleaning the deck. The next morning, we’d start pouring concrete on the deck at 5:30 AM, just after the inspector gave the final blessing on the rebar meeting the requirements. Our concrete finishers would wrap up their work around 2:00 PM and leave behind a beautifully manicured surface. We used specially engineered concrete that cured more quickly and far exceeded the strength requirements of the structural engineer. That way, the next morning at 7:00 AM we’d receive reports from the testing firm confirming the concrete had reached 75% of its designed strength, a requirement for steel erection. With that confirmation in hand, 8:00AM came around and steel columns started landing on the anchor bolts. It was incredible coordination, everything was by the book and we were rolling.
IT’S ALL TOO MUCH
The pace of the project and changes in the summer of 2016 was extremely tiring. The structural phase of most projects is challenging but it’s also limited to a small group of ‘players’ or trade partners. Now that the project was rapidly expanding, more and more trades came onboard, each with their own needs. Our entire Mortenson team became spread razor thin. Frustration mounted as managing the multitude of vested interests in the project consumed more and more time. Any one particular issue could affect the architects, engineers, inspectors, consultants, fire department, campus police, Homeland Security, broadcast companies, contractors, subcontractors, sub-sub contractors, university athletics, donors, alumni, academics and facilities departments. We were so wrapped up with the now, that looking ahead wasn’t possible.
Days went from 10 hours to 12 -14 hours and Saturdays became another work day. To make matters worse, the increased number of eyes on the project revealed more and more issues. The compressed design schedule reared its ugly head. The complete design we all wanted, had not come, and architectural updates, owner changes and code review incorporations were being issued every few weeks. Each of these brought new drawing packages which we had to thoroughly review, distribute, price and evaluate for schedule impacts. Once this process was complete it was sent onto ICON for review.
ICON Venue Group was the University’s hired representatives for the project. They were composed of mostly former general contractors that switched career paths and now advocate for the owners and manage the architect and builder. ICON had experience bringing many high profile sports projects to fruition across the world. They also had a reputation for unreasonable interpretations of the contract and arrogant dispositions.
Unfortunately for us, Mortenson and the downstream contractors were bound by very strict state contracts, which are not friendly for builders. As if the deck was not stacked against us enough already, ICON’s main representative on the job was a former Mortenson employee. He had a score to settle and the contract language to do it.
It would play out when after spending weeks putting proposals together for the various changes, they would quickly be returned. The response from ICON normally going like this:
“These numbers are way too high.”
“It won’t take that much time. Five men for three weeks to install the underground? C’mon it won’t be more than four guys for two and a half weeks.”
“That is base scope. We’re not paying for that.”
“You should have assumed the impact to the project as part of your base contract.”
Their nitpicking reviews were met with annoyance and left a sour taste in the mouth. The size and scope of the project was already so overwhelming that almost no one onsite wanted more work.
“Why are we putting all this work in to proposals that are just thrown back in our face? We should be focusing on building what is currently in our contracts.” We’d say.
Not only was the design continuing to evolve, creating more work for everyone, but the purse strings were cinching. Legitimate design coordination omissions were being forced down the contracting team’s throat. Every dollar was being fought over. We couldn’t offer anything in hopes to rectify situations because Mortenson’s budget was drying up. There was no more money to give. No deadlines to extend. It was, you owe it to us. That’s what your contract says. Tough shit.
In this way, ICON successfully put downward pressure on pricing and did their job advocating for CSU. But simultaneously, they created an environment of hostility and personal battles onsite. I tried to avoid interacting with ICON’s people because I always felt that I was being manipulated. Trust eroded like quicksand underfoot.
Later we came to find out, that it was bigger than the CSU Stadium and larger than a personal grudge. As three of the largest players in the sports construction world, ICON, Populous and Mortenson had worked on many projects together but recent history had left bad blood. We were the unlucky few that had to deal with the breaking point of tension. The strain and stress percolated down from the boardrooms into every nook and cranny of the project.
In the fall of 2016, we started missing dates consistently. We were losing belief in our team’s ability to cope with the chaos. Doubt crept in and we were barely treading water. Then the holidays hit the project like a giant wave.
DO WE HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?
Many on the construction team, who had pushed off summer vacations to make dates in July, now took time off for Thanksgiving. A large number of our Mexican tradesmen made their annual trip back to their family homes in the northern states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa to celebrate Christmas. Much to our chagrin, Populous and several of the key engineering companies completely shut down their offices for almost two weeks. In a most crucial time of the project, the project was idle. When it finally got moving again in January of 2017, we could no longer hide it: we were in serious trouble.
We could no longer hide it: we were in serious trouble.
Normal construction schedules have one critical path – or the longest series of activities from breaking ground to turning over the building. But when we updated the schedule to include the inaction of the holidays, we had four. We had burnt almost all of the float, meaning that if almost any activity took longer than was stated in the schedule, the project would miss the turnover date. Everything from painting bathrooms on Level 5 and putting in lights in Level 1, to installing exterior metal panels and paving sidewalks, was now on one of the critical paths. Everyone was under the gun.
Adding to the gravity of the situation, most company’s annual finances were tabulated at the close of the calendar year. Once realizing the true position of the project’s status and comparing it to the expenditures, the projections showed substantial losses. Vice-presidents and executives came to walk the project with increasing frequency. We could spot them wearing bright, unsullied safety vests and either old, broken in boots or shiny loafers. Their presence validated the rumors and increased the negative momentum onsite.
Everyone started looking out for themselves and the idea of teamwork evaporated. Battles played out all over. An architectural issue that might have been a phone call to Populous six months earlier, was now a chain of nasty emails. Formal letters of non-compliance flew around, some landing in inboxes at 6:30AM. Normal brush ups onsite became full-on arguments that had to be broken up. Acts of retribution increased. Stories surfaced daily of damage to finished product and trades intentionally installing work out of sequence to screw someone else. Relationships soured and adversarial tones became the norm. The pressure cooker that had been the stadium up to the holidays, just had the burner turned all the way up.
THE SCARY REALITY
After our last area superintendent goes through his activities, the morning meeting ends and we bundle back up. The project’s supervisory staff leak out of the building’s future loading dock to join the full project’s manpower who wait in the snow. The sun rose while we were in the meeting but clouds blew in over the mountains. The black sky turned gray. The bone-rattling cold meets strikes us while Garrett announces to the crowd of 900 what safety items to be aware of today.
As I scan the faces of the men and women who actually install the work, it’s hard to find someone that looks like they want to be there. Everyone is freezing and many of them will be earning their money out in the elements. My eyes wander back to the podium where Garrett stands and my eyes focus on a big yellow sign. It reads, ‘Days Successfully Worked Without an Injury: 6’. On top of everything else, the safety performance on the job had been dismal.
I think back to a Saturday afternoon in 2016 when I was checking the progress on top floor, where the press boxes would sit. None of the glass and steel cladding had been installed yet, my gaze was unobstructed. There was a breeze through the building and the view of Fort Collins was gorgeous. The field, which was cluttered with materials and equipment, was going to be incredible.
Then I heard a siren.
There was an ambulance racing through campus and onto the northeast corner of the site. I started running down stairs and across the site to help. When I arrived to the entrance of the Alumni Center, an iron worker was being loaded into the back of the ambulance.
I feared the worst.
With adrenaline pumping through my body, I started recording times, comings and goings and took photos for the incident report that we’d have to put together. From what I gathered, he had been installing a piece of tube steel but when the forklift misplaced its forks, the tube broke away from the tack welds and rebounded into the iron worker’s chest. He had been pinned in the boom lift and had to be helped out. Luckily, his checkup came out negative and was released from the hospital later that day. He was shaken up but would return to work on Monday with bruised ribs and continue grinding. We had dodged another bullet.
“They don’t care about us, they just need to make the date,” a pipe fitter says behind me in response to Garrett’s safety message.
Overhearing his words sucks. It wasn’t that we didn’t value safety – of course we all wanted everyone to go home the same way they came to work – but the energy and hours required to adjust to changes and make deadlines drained everyone’s reserves. As hard as we worked to ensure there were proper plans in place, that the trades were wearing the right equipment and employing the right technique, incidents kept happening. Most of the injuries we encountered were doing regular things. The constant exertion undercut our focus.
It was such a large job too, that making meaningful connections with the more than 900 craft was a real challenge and rarely occurred. Outside of management personnel and our Mortenson carpenters, I hardly knew anyone’s name and I felt guilty for it. The feeling from the craft onsite wasn’t whether or not another incident would happen, but when and how bad, it would be.
The frequent mention in management meetings of the $1,000,000 penalty – if the project wasn’t ready for the first game – leaked onto site. It’s shock factor caught everyone’s attention and would become a common topic of conversation onsite. The repetition of that message, showed to the craft where the inherent priority lay. But internally, we were constantly reminded of our shortcomings on safety performance. The incidents were unacceptable and it was a warning sign as to where the project was headed.
During one particular meeting, we’d learned about the construction safety pyramid. The widest block on the bottom being the most mundane issues: workers not wearing their gloves, glasses or hard hat. The higher the pyramid rose, the more severe the consequences. Second to the top was an orange block: lost-time injuries. Injuries so severe that a person couldn’t come back to work for an extended period of time. We had reached that level. The top of level was a terrifying red triangle, a workplace fatality.
“By a show of hands,” Garrett asked us, “who has been on a job with a fatality?”
About half of the hands went up including Garrett’s and Jack’s. I was shocked and terrified. They didn’t prepare us for that kind of situation in school, now it was a real possibility. We were working our way up the pyramid and the complexity and speed of the stadium presented many grim opportunities. There was a lot of collective fear on the project that we might reach that pinnacle.
The pressure of everything on the job had gotten to me. I was about to crack.
LOSING IT
“Break it out on three,” Garrett announces after finishing the final warm up calisthenic. “One. Two. Three.”
KOOOSH
A muffled clap rings out at 7:10AM.
The mass of hundreds streams into and around the building. Engines stroke and turnover. Forklifts start bouncing around the frozen ground. Tractor trailers start beeping their way back into the loading dock. Boom lifts start reaching up the side of the building. Chatter starts flowing on the radio. As I observe the organized chaos called a construction site, the coming day starts to root.
My phone will be buzzing incessantly. I’ll make or receive around 65 calls today. My email inbox is at about 3,000 unread messages and I’ll receive another 100-115 before the day is over. I’m behind on my required company training and I have to carve out a few minutes to take the mandatory one. I know I’m going to get grilled on why our commissioning schedule is slipping and why the test of the domestic water system went so badly. I have to manage a conference call with a lot of people wanting different solutions to a big issue. Plus, I need to get the agenda out for the weekly meeting I run so it’s productive and organized. It’s a terrible hour and a half of dysfunction if I don’t send it out early. It always looks bad on me when that happens. I also need to inspect the electrical conduit installation for level five so we can install the ceilings tomorrow. I won’t leave the job trailer until 7PM tonight, another thirteen-hour day is in the making.
I slowly type out a text message to my girlfriend: ‘Looks like it will be another long one. I won’t be home until 8 or so.’ I hate how frequently I have to send that message. Before I hit send, my phone rings. It’s Mark.
“Hey buddy,” Mark says over the noise of power tools in the background.
“Hey what’s going on?” I say back
“We failed the re-inspection.” he said plainly, referring to our conversation in the meeting.
“Are you serious?” I reply as I sigh and look up at the lifeless sky
“That damper is still wrong.”
“Fuckkkkk.” I vent.
“The inspector said he didn’t see anything had been done,”
“Nobody even touched it?” I say back, “John told me it was done.”
“No, it’s still wrong. Get it fixed this morning.” Mark says before hanging up.
Not only was I the ‘brakes’ of the project, slowing progress on a critical area, but my word was also being undermined. I kicked myself for not looking at it myself but I trusted John. He was an “old-timer”, an industry veteran who postponed his retirement to help out on the project. He had worked for the same company for 35 years and had all the experience and expertise I lacked. He was generally one of the few positive and happy faces onsite, his upcoming retirement obviously at the forefront of his mind. We became close throughout the project as he afforded me the time of day to ask questions about plumbing techniques, code issues and stories from ‘back-in-the-day’. We were close which made it all the worse
Then my phone buzzed again, this time it’s Garrett.
‘This is not good.’ I think to myself as I answer.
“Hey Garr…”
“What is this bull shit about the damper not being fixed?” Garrett interrupts, wasting no time.
“I just heard about it from Mark, I don’t know…”
“You walked it didn’t you?” Garrett interrupts again.
“I didn’t put my eyes on it. John told me…”
“Are you fucking serious?” He yells back. “Put your eyes on it!”
Yesterday’s thirteen-hour day should’ve been fourteen.
“Fix it!” He yells before hanging up on me.
I hate being interrupted and my blood starts to boil. What initially felt like disappointment, now turned to anger. I had relied on John and now I was getting chewed out because of it. I head into the building and start running. I need to see exactly what the issue is.
I dial John.
No answer.
I dial again.
No answer.
My mind races in a caffeinated rage, hyper focused on that stupid ceiling and the feeling of betrayal.
I know that word must have got to John by now, so his lack of answering just annoys me further. Through the concrete caverns of the half-finished visitor locker rooms, my mind races in a caffeinated rage, hyper focused on that stupid ceiling and the feeling of betrayal. I’m so tired of taking losses and never being appreciated. I turn a corner and see John, walking 30 feet ahead.
“John!” I yell, an underlying vitriol in my voice.
He turns around quickly and sees it’s me, then turns back and keeps walking.
“Hey come here!” I shout down the hall as I pursue him, “It wasn’t fixed!”
The sound of my boots gets and he turns around. I approach him with a head of steam, a full back would line up a cornerback in the open field.
“Just leave me alone.” He mumbles.
“You said it was done!” I yell. I’ve lost volume control and the blood boils throughout my entire body, “We FAILED!”
“Oh whatever.” He scoffs, trying to get out the situation. But his nonchalance pulls a trigger.
“What the FUCK do you mean by that?” I ask him. All the previous camaraderie instantly evaporated. The F-word set an unrecoverable tone.
“It doesn’t even matter!” He says loudly as he turns for the exit doors. “Just fuck off!”
He wanted no part in the project in that moment.
“IT’S NOT RIGHT!” I righteously yell down the corridor as ten workers look on. I don’t even see them.
“FUCK THIS! FUCK THIS!” I scream as I stomp through the building and back into the frozen cold.
INSANITY, NORMALIZED
This is what building the stadium had come to. My morning war path ended with telling off a 65-year old veteran of the industry. Sure, he didn’t do his due diligence but he didn’t deserve what I’d just unleashed. Maybe, someone he had trusted told him it was fixed, maybe the betrayal started several layers below. It didn’t matter. The damage had been done, the toll had been taken.
I think to myself, ’Does anyone know what the hell is going on up here? Why are we doing this? Why am I putting myself through this? You promise we can build a project faster than anyone has ever done before, never have a complete design and ride our ass on all of the bullshit that we can’t avoid? Does anyone realize the toll it’s taking on people?’
All of us working on the project were put in these win-less situations. Impossible scenarios of being made to feel responsible for the outcomes of a game with 10, 20, 50 or 100 different players. The intensity of each part of the job added up to an intolerable level and I was running myself into the ground using stress as fuel, but there are still five more months. No amount of work will ever be enough to catch up. The finish line is the only thing that mattered.
The ‘get-it-done’ mindset led us all to be completely unhealthy. We ate fast food for lunch, perpetually gulp down coffee and energy drinks and don’t sleep well. Plus, all of our emotional energy is used on the job site managing relationships. The examples of loneliness were everywhere. There were those who’d never been able to pull themselves out of the spiral of stress, to carve out the time to build a romantic relationship. Or worse, those who had lost genuine connection because they fell prey to the demands of faster and faster projects. Many in the latter group seemed to then double down on the work hard, play hard lifestyle, sealing their fate.
It wasn’t a pretty image of what all-out commitment to work looks like, but it isn’t always a conscious decision. Rather, the collective social environment begins framing your version of reality. For example, it’s easier to feel good about an average marriage when you’re surrounded by failing ones. You don’t feel badly about working 65 hour weeks when some people are legitimately working 75-85 hours a week.
‘At least I don’t do that,’ I tell myself.
We normalize our environments and they normalize us. We are comparative creatures after all and we most commonly revert to laziness, using our current peer group to create the benchmark.
STAND TOGETHER
Now offsite, I cross the street and stand in the driveway of the ‘Red House’ – the former CSU rugby team residence converted into our project offices. Six Mortenson trucks are parked on the front yard. I look back at the project and ignore another call. A forklift is setting a pallet of stone inside a tented scaffold.
“Yo!” my friend Luis hollers at me, breaking me out of a zone out.
Luis and I were roommates during my last semester in college and our friendship became a brotherhood during the late nights working together on the stadium. Seeing him instantly improves my mood.
“You want a breakfast burrito amigo?!” he asks excitedly
“There is a God!” I reply, “CLLLAAARRROOOO WEY!”
“Good! Then you’re buying today!” he jokes, pulling a foil wrapped burrito out of his hoodie.
We share a good laugh and suddenly the world stops feeling like it’s crumbling beneath my feet. Luis heads down the sidewalk and back into the madness and I look up at the sky. The sun peaks through some of the clouds and the welcome rays pour out and add a bit of hope. It’s a gorgeous winter morning.
Then a black suburban pulls up and parks on the last remaining sliver of yard. Out walks the Associate Athletic Director, Max. He is one of the only people on campus to regularly express gratitude for our work. Two young guys jump out the back.
“Meet Capri Bibbs and Shaquille Barrett,” he says to me.
“Nice to meet you!” I say as I shake hands with two former CSU football stars who now play for the Denver Broncos. I can’t help but notice the plum sized ring that Barrett is sporting. He had played alongside Von Miller and Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl last year. The diamonds dazzle in the sunlight.
“Alright let’s get you guys some gear,” Max says to Bibbs and Barrett. They head into the Red House for hard hats.
“Nice meeting you guys,” I say back, smiling ear to ear “Enjoy the project.”
I look back at the project again and draw a comparison to the athletes that I just met. They had proven themselves on the biggest stage at a very young age. When I think about it, I am trying to do the same thing. As the project moved forward, I took on more and more responsibility and became a greater force on the project. Now only 25 years old, I was the main point of contact for $54 million worth of contracts. It was crazy to think about my job in those terms but it was true. I was managing schedules, putting pricing together and leading meetings. I could make things happen. I was proving myself.
Even with everything against us – the schedule, the lack of design, the financial losses, the safety issues, the quality problems, the commute and the hostility – we are in the fight. Our brotherhood (with some sisters too) had persevered through it all and we just needed to stand together and finish. We need to remember that we are building the stadium of our alma mater. Our fingerprints will be on building that the rest of the country will see on national television; a legacy that will stay on campus for decades.
We can’t quit now.
As I walk back to my office, the image that has gotten me this far in the project surfaces again. Me alone, standing on the field on a warm summer night under the bright lights that I worked so hard to coordinate, install, test and commission. That moment will be for my Pops, who passed away just two months before I started working on the stadium. I know that he would be proud of me. He would be able to relate with the intensity of the project. I need to do it for him.
Everyone onsite has their own reasons to push forward and underlying it all, we are out to prove that the boundary is a bit further. That we can achieve something no one else in the world has yet to do: build a football stadium in 20 months. Having a hand in transforming a parking lot into a fully functional, top-of-the-line football stadium in less than two years will be amazing. But there is a lot more work to do.
I get into my office and start warming up. I check my email, there are already 29 unread messages. My phone rings again, I answer and the morning goes on.
GRINDING OUT A WIN
Those brutal mornings would continue for another five months. The stress increased even further but our team stuck together. We were proud of the lack of attrition and it was a testament to our bond. Together we pushed forward on the manic pilgrimage that represented turning over the stadium. One night, everyone stayed up until 3AM working on loose ends in the academic offices and classrooms. We grabbed paint brushes and vacuums to meet the deadline. It was an act of solidarity on the most critical night on the project.
Then on June 9th, 2017, the date we had all circled on our calendars a year prior, ICON, Populous and the University accepted the building as substantially complete. There was a long list of stipulations and outstanding loose ends that went along with the acceptance, but we did it. It wasn’t pretty but we grinded out a victory. We built a stadium faster than anyone else in the world*.
When the 41,000 people in attendance during the opening game cheered during the opening kickoff, chills ran through my body. I looked over at other members of the team and we all smiled and cheered.
In that moment, the stress, exhaustion and pain were all worth it.
In the two years since Canvas Stadium opened, it has performed the way it was intended to. It has exceeded revenue projections and has become an integral part of campus and the City of Fort Collins. The football program has not yet taken the next step but hope lives on the athletics department. Hundreds of thousands have enjoyed games in the stands and it has hosted weddings, conferences, fund raisers and 5K races. Students take their class photo on the field every year, then go to class and plan their futures under the east bleachers.
For a university with a motto ‘Dream Big and Work Hard’, the largely alumni built stadium stands as a tremendous achievement.
This is the stadium’s story.
*Construction timelines of major stadium projects are not well documented publicly but based on research, the fastest stadium ever built prior to Canvas Stadium was Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. That facility was built in 24 months for use in the 2010 World cup. A recent soccer stadium was built in Washington DC in a reported 17 months but was more than 20,000 seats smaller. If you are aware of potentially faster projects, please email the details to beamanoftheworld@gmail.com*
Comments
Was quite an experience. That was a good article. Great job.
Hey man, I gotta say….I could not be more proud of you!
You know your self and where you belong. I always knew there was something amazingly special about you.
Keep living your best life my friend. You will continue to change the world.