When we think about historic buildings of ancient times that are still standing, we can stand in awe of the level of detail that was incorporated into designs without modern tools and technology. For a few decades, it seemed like we would never see that type of character in buildings again, but sports stadiums are becoming modern wonders, pushing the limits of not only what’s capable from a construction standpoint, but also the budgets.
It seems as though the benchmark for NFL stadiums these days is, at minimum, 1 billion dollars in project costs and those costs continue to climb as NFL owners fight to outdo each other. The new Las Vegas Raiders Stadium, currently under construction, is nearly the $2 billion mark with total costs projected to be around $1.8 billion.
On September 18, 2017, crews led by a joint venture of Mortenson and McCarthy began site work on the stadium, which sits just outside of the Las Vegas strip. Over the past few months, the Raiders have been releasing a series of videos on YouTube showing an inside look at the design process, finding the correct design-build team, preparing the site, and the construction of the stadium.
The series is called “From The Ground Up” and is currently on episode 4, which was recently released late last week. The overall schedule for each episode is spaced around a month apart and it’s a really fascinating look at how large companies run a billion dollar project. It takes you inside job meetings, concrete pours, and even shows off some of the technology used on the project.
Mike Rowe, host of the popular television show Dirty Jobs, narrates the video series, which always adds a welcome tone to a blue-collar focused show. If that doesn’t keep you coming back for the next video, you can always count on some solid digs on the Raiders on-the-field performance last season in the comment section.
Each video is between 10 and 15 minutes long. Below are the first 4 episodes for your viewing enjoyment and be sure to check their YouTube channel for the next one some time in March.
For those of you interested in even more coverage of the stadium construction, the Raiders also have a live stadium cam with multiple views of the stadium progress on their website.
From The Ground Up - Ep. 1: "More Than Just A Building"
From The Ground Up - Ep. 2: "Nature's Cement"
From The Ground Up - Ep. 3: "We Don't Like Surprises"
From The Ground Up - Ep. 4: "Every Little Bit of Time Counts"
While still new in the construction industries, robots are typically designed to perform a specific task in a highly precise and efficient way, like the rebar tying robot, Tybot or the brick-laying robot Hadrian X. More recently, though, robots are being imagined as platforms for 3rd party companies to develop hardware and accessories to attach to the base robot, like the Boston Dynamics robotic dog, Spot. I recently came across a new robot, called Baubot, which hopes to one day perform tasks using every tool on a typical jobsite.