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/37461
FieldScience in. We didn’t think we would have 10 weeks to get it established from sprigs, we went with the safest avenue and the grass that would provide us the best playing surface. Getting all of our thoughts on paper was easy; the hard part was putting it in politically correct format for the University to put the RFP together. It took a couple of drafts before I had everything covered and in the correct language. Working for a public university has a lot of paperwork and hoops to jump through to make sure everything is legal. In October of 2010, we felt the RFP was com- pleted and ready to go out for bid. A require- ment of the RFP was that the design/build team includes a sports field designer, agrono- mist and soil scientist, a Kentucky licensed engineer, an irrigation designer and a sports field contractor with prior soccer field experi- ence. After many meetings, interviews, and revisions we awarded Vescio SportsFields the project. Their design/build team consisted of: Dr. AJ Powell, Chuck Dixon, Bucky Trotter, LandTec and GRW Engineering as well as the Sports Fields staff. SportsFields used a local excavation con- tractor to remove the existing surface about 10 inches deep to establish a sub grade. The subcontractor used dozers, excavators, pans, and a road grader to remove all the existing material. Once the sub grade was established, the irrigation work began by trenching in the lines. We were ready to “proof roll” the sub grade to get certification from the geotechni- cal engineer and ran into some isolated unsta- ble areas on the field (about 9,000 sq. ft. or less than 10% of the entire project). By the way, we had multiple geotechnical borings pulled from the field in the summer of 2010. Sometimes, no matter how much prevention and prior planning goes into a project, you can’t predict all the problems you will run into. Once the stabilization problem was remediated, SportsFields could begin laser grading of the sub base and installation of the drainage system. We currently are finishing the drainage stage and are bringing in sand {July 15, 2011]. If everything goes well, the project will be complete as the article comes hot off of the press. In fitting fashion, once construction began, we experienced the wettest spring on record in Lexington (we have received 93% of our yearly rainfall in the first 6.25 months of the year). We have all seen evidence of this with the record flooding in the Midwest. This has affected the construction timeline and made securing enough sand difficult. Our sand source, Nugent Sand, has experienced record flooding in their dredging pits. Our sod supplier, Pike Creek Turf, is on the oppo- site end of the spectrum; experiencing a lack of rainfall. The entire project process from creating the RFP and interviewing and selecting a de- sign/build contractor through construction has been an interesting one. With careful planning and by performing our due diligence I believe that we have been able to deal with the hiccups of excessively inclement weather and unknown existing conditions and will end up with a game soccer field that will serve us well for years to come.■ Marcus Dean, CSFM is the assistant sports turf manager for the University of Kentucky. 18 SportsTurf | August 2011 www.sportsturfonline.com