SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/126035
Irrigation&Drainage | By Luke Frank What's trending in sports turf irrigation: Q&A with Jeff Bruce I f you BeLieve irrigation consuLtants just know sprinkler systems, you're way off the mark. The American Society of Irrigation Consultants (ASIC) has spent the past 40-plus years training and supporting irrigation professionals in the industry in emerging water codes and regulations, water resource development and quality, turf management, soil science, chemistry, agronomy, horticulture, business development, marketing—you get the idea. We caught up with Jeff Bruce, ASIC immediate past president, and principal of Jeffrey L. Bruce & Company (JLB) in North Kansas City, MO. Bruce founded JLB in 1986, and has rocketed to the top of the sports turf industry since, completing about 600 professional and NCAA sports complexes in the past 10 years alone, 30 SportsTurf | May 2013 including Alex Box Baseball Stadium at LSU, Carolina Panthers Stadium, University of Kentucky Commonwealth Stadium, and Notre Dame Athletic Complex. We asked Bruce what's trending in sports turf irrigation. His vision of the future might surprise you—it did us. asic: Tell me about the role of an irrigation consultant in overall design and management of sports fields. How has that evolved over the past decade? ALEX BOX BASEBALL STADIUM at LSU. Photo credit Jeffrey L. Bruce & Company. JLB: Our perspective is probably a little different because we don't just consider the playing field; we profile the entire sports complex as an integrated system. These enterprises should be completely interconnected from the bottom up; drainage, catchment, soil profile, irrigation, turf type, and so forth. Then we consider usage, safety, longevity, resilience, budget, and maintenance and management needs and capabilities. Then we look at the surrounding grounds, the plant material, the water sources, the practice facilities, the parking facilities. It's all interrelated. Remember that for every stadium venue there are several practice fields that are used much more intensively. Typically there are more business opportunities for those than the stadiums so we like to tie them all together. This has evolved into a business model for us that requires a lot of specialty expertise. I'm not sure anyone else does it, but clients like managing an entire project through a single consultant. Is it a good representation of an irrigation consultant's role? Maybe down the road. As we see more slippage of the mar- I absolutely believe there will be intensive new regulations in water sourcing very soon.—Jeff Bruce JEFFREY L. BRUCE, FASLA www.sportsturfonline.com