Las Vegas Stadium reached a critical milestone on Valentines Day 2020, when Mortenson-McCarthy, builders of the $2 billion Raiders and UNLV stadium, announced that the cable net system portion of the roof structure was finally moved into place without further problems. While it may seem the hard part of the process is behind the construction team, as the Las Vegas Whistleblower Workers it’s just the end of one part of it, and leads to the start of another one that will text the integrity of the entire work done to date.
We completed the #BigLift this week. The cables that create the base for the 7 acre ETFE roof are in their final position. #LasVegasRaiders @AllegiantStadm #LetsGo pic.twitter.com/ms12LqBxkq
— Mortenson | McCarthy (@MMcJVLV) February 15, 2020
The Las Vegas Stadium Roof Assembly Process Was Plagued With Problems Before The Cable Net Delay.
It’s important to understand that the cable net system is tied to trusses and a set of what are called compression rings. If one recalls, several of the trusses were incorrectly installed and had to be adjusted – those trusses had to be put up before the cable net could be lifted. Problems started because, overall, subcontractors were on a fast-track schedule, tied to high penalty fines baked into the Mortenson-McCarthy work contract with Las Vegas Stadium. The rush to make the deadlines caused some subcontractors to make errors, and in the case of Freyssinet, they made one involving what I was told was “pre-stressing” the cables in place before they were ready. Also, bad bolts and substandard welds were not in a “few places”, but many areas.
Thus, for Mortenson-McCarthy to have reached the milestone of lifting the cable net into place, the following tasks laid out for Zennie62Media by the Las Vegas Whistleblower Workers to me via email had to have been done.
This is what I was told would solve the problem:
For your clarification:
In order for Freyssinet (the cable-net subcontractor) to start attaching and begin the lifting process these things needed to be 100% per the original sequence of work for Derr and the decking company in order for Freyssinet to start:
1) complete erection of main structural members and tie in members
2) All bolts needed to be installed and inspected
3) Decking is: metal sheets that cover the main roof structure. This needed to be 100%
( I explained what deck was for you)
4) All the above things I just listed, have allowances for leave out iron, deck sheets and in spots random bolts. That being said, all main members should be complete. This includes everything attached to the interior CR (“CR” is “compression ring”).
When we started to install temp works on top of the deck and CR these things weren’t complete:
1) Derr was still making the critical cantilevered picks.
2) Deck was not even close to being completed. They rushed the deckers to catch-up this caused bolts to be covered and caused a lot of extra work for both companies, more importantly the men.
3) The nodes still needed to be shimmed bolted and torqued, when freyssinet started to pull cables.
All the above was a rush to make up earlier delays. Freyssinet started as needed by MMC (that’s Mortenson – McCarthy, the stadium’s main construction builder contractor). This was not the sequence nor was the ring complete ( nodes, shims, bolts) still needed to be installed and inspected.
Sent from my iPhone
So, and again, now that Mortenson-McCarthy has announced the net is in place, we have to assume (for now) all of that was done. But here’s the next step: the installation of “approximately 309,000 square feet of printed multi-layer ETFE foil cushion assembly to include intermediate / secondary steel (girders, beams, posts, etc.)” that the cable net is supposed to support (according to the original guaranteed max price contract that was approved by the Las Vegas Stadium Authority).
That’s going to provide the real test of the entire system. Freyssinet originally billed out the cable net project at $31.6 million. It will be interesting to learn if that cost number remained, or if Mortenson-McCarthy made the subcontractor pay a damage amount.
Whatever the case, the next phase involving the roof, and including what’s referred to as the “membrane”, or the ETFE sections, will take as long as four months (according to the project schedule posted in the stadium monthly reports), leading to May or June (as predicted by the Las Vegas Stadium Whistleblowers). In the project schedule, the roof was to have been finished by this month. Additionally, on October 24, 2019, Don Webb, the Oakland Raiders Chief Operating Officer, told the press that the process of “pinning” or the attaching the cable net to the commpression ring, was to have been done by November of 2019 – now, it’s February, a full three month’s behind schedule on a roof build project that was originally supposed to have been finished in August of 2019, but now is seeing a date closer to June 2020 and almost one year off.
No Las Vegas Stadium Tickets For Sale For Any Event, And Raiders Still At Oakland Coliseum
The Las Vegas Stadium Authority is bent on presenting the scenario that NFL and UNLV Football, concerts, and scocer will be played in the facility this year. Given that there are no tickets for any of those events up at StubHub, it’s hard to see how this is going to be case.
On top of that the Raiders are still the Oakland Raiders to the Oakland Coliseum Joint Powers Authority, and that’s because the Silver and Black still, as of this Valentines Day according to an Oakland elected official I talked with on the phone, have not told the Coliseum JPA Executive Director Henry Gardner of its plans.
By contrast, tickets for So-Fi Stadium events, like the Taylor Swift Concert July 25th, are already on sale at StubHub . You can pick out your seat right now.
Right now, the truth is that the Las Vegas Stadium called Allegiant Stadium is not ready to host anything, even a dog show. Even if it leads to fines, Mortenson-McCarthy should focus on getting the facility built correctly, and then make sure it is well-made. Las Vegas Stadium has faced too many set backs to given any reasonable person comfort that it will be by ready for use by July at this stage, or August for that matter.
Time and tide should be the operative words here.
Stay tuned. Zennie62Media is credentialed to cover the 2020 NFL Combine.