Schiavone Construction Gives Young Fan Special Briefing on Second Avenue Subway Project

Tue, 04/13/2010 - 14:51

Five-year-old Ben Miller with Schiavone Construction safety professionals and AGC senior vice president Kris Young, observing New York City’s Second Avenue subway project.

Most construction projects have a range of fans and foes, especially when the project means shutting down large stretches of New York's Second Avenue for years at a time.  That's the case with the Schiavone/Skanska joint project to build a new stretch of subway line in Manhattan's Upper East Side. But the contractors didn't expect that one of their biggest fans would be young construction expert Ben Miller.  Unlike most five-year olds, Ben knows what a tunnel boring machine is, and knows the difference between various makes and models.  So when AGC's senior vice president Kris Young (Ben's a big fan of the Web site for her underground boring company in Iowa) asked the folks at Schiavone is she could bring Ben over to their construction office for a briefing on the project when she was in town last week, they were more than happy to help out. With the help of Schiavone senior vice president Michael Goldstein, project engineer Julio Martinez and Skanska safety engineer Ron Knott, Ben got a special briefing on one of the largest transit construction projects underway in the U.S. today.  They walked him through the safety rules every worker on the project must follow, gave him an update on their progress, and let him watch (from a safe distance of course) as their team installed new excavation equipment. It was a nice thing to do for a special young fan.  And who knows, maybe thanks to the time a few busy professionals spent showing him one of their projects, Ben Miller just got the inspiration needed to start his own contracting firm when he grows up. For more information, contact Brian Turmail, turmailb@agc.org, (703) 837-5310.