Dylan Cook job shadow with Richard Brown

This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of shadowing one of Ideal's Director of Construction, Richard Brown. Richard spends most of his time at the New wings stadium, Little Caesars Arena. I worked in Pontiac for a few hours before meeting down there around 11. After showing me some basic blueprints of the overall sight layout and what Ideal was responsible for, we went to Hopcat for lunch. Rich and I were accompanied by a few other Ideal guys including Steven Sinn. After lunch, Rich took me on a tour of the different buildings in the Arena proper area. This includes building AB, which was almost done with the steel erection and starting to pour elevated slabs on the different levels. We walked around to take a look at where build C will go, as well as building DE. Building C will being the steel erection soon after AB is done, and Ideal just got an invitation for DE for the civil, steel and concrete work. After that Rich and I went inside the arena itself to take a look at the progress being made inside the building. The steel erection was almost complete on that part of the building, the crane was filling in the area that was left open for it to get out from the center. We went on different levels to see a few different views to see what it will be like. After we got back from the tour, I asked Rich some questions about what he does everyday, what his favorite part about working at Ideal as well as other. The day then concluded with him showing me some spreadsheets used to track money and resources, which is a big part of his job, as well as schedule projection and project look aheads.

This is building AB, which had a concrete pour the day before I was there that we looked at. The other of the building end is almost done with steel and the Ideal team will begin with building C after that.

 

This is a Picture of Rich and I at the same end of building AB

This picture was taken as I was leaving the project site from Sproat Street. This is the "Northern" elevation of the building, with me facing SE when I took it.