Thirty-five years ago, Ames Construction was preparing to embark on a make-or-break project.
All eyes were on Ames when the company broke ground on the Denver International Airport project in late 1989. The attention only grew with the company’s success until site work concluded 5 years later.
At the start of the historic project, the company was in its 28th year, and everything it had done up until that point had prepared it for this new challenge. Many competitors were skeptical. The initial contract required Ames to move 36 million cubic yards of dirt in 17 months—an extremely aggressive schedule.
The company vowed not just to meet the deadline but to beat it. Ames set a goal to move an average of 100,000 cubic yards per 24-hour period. The goal was often surpassed and, at times, more than doubled. With more than 300 employees, Ames worked nonstop, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Despite encountering unexpected layers of very hard, highly cemented sandstone, Ames set a pace unequaled by other contractors on the project by moving the first 30 million cubic yards of dirt in 10 months—a remarkable achievement by anyone’s standards.
As Ames proved itself, more contracts followed. Ultimately, Ames completed six major contracts as a prime contractor and more than 40 contracts as a subcontractor, and crews performed a total of 130 million cubic yards of earthwork.
