T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas’ new sports and entertainment venue, opened in April 2016 after AECOM Hunt successfully completed an aggressive 19-month construction schedule as the project’s general contractor.

The arena includes locker facilities, premium dressing rooms, a green room and multipurpose spaces to accommodate a variety of sports and entertainment events, as well as a two-acre outdoor pre-function and special event plaza.

Building the 650,000-square-foot (60,300-square-meters) site required more than 7,000 pieces of steel total, some weighing more than 7,100 tons (6,441 metric tons. But getting the construction materials and the other equipment to the site was challenge. The arena is located in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip between two busy casino hotels with heavy surrounding vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

Safety Achievements

AECOM Hunt delivered a flawless execution. The team’s significant planning for public safety protection ensured that materials, such as 350-foot (106 meter) long steel trusses capable of 200,000 pounds (91,000 kilograms) of support, arrived under close supervision and in a coordinated manner.

Site work was supported by a safety management system that provided focused safety policies such mandated the use of crane consultants or required sub-contractors to provide full-time safety coordinators.

Teams started every shift with a safety discussion. Workers also attended quarterly safety stand-downs. These events ensured that all employees were informed about emerging on-site safety issues and near misses or injuries were investigated.

Achievements and Outcomes

T-Mobile Arena was completed with zero lost-time injuries over more than two million work hours.

The project was a winner of ENR’s 2016 Best of the Best Projects Award for Excellence in Safety. The award is determined by a panel of industry safety manager and experts who evaluate projects based on their incident rates, worker hours and safety programs.