Cincinnati, OH — On April 2, the Cincinnati Bengals announced the
selection of FieldTurf as the provider of its new synthetic turf field for Paul
Brown Stadium (PBS). The tear-out and installation must be completed
a week before the Bengals’ August 21 preseason home opener.
In this first installment of a new series called “Darian’s Diary,” PBS
Head Groundskeeper Darian Daily explains the process the PBS’ and Bengals’
representatives went through to select a synthetic turf provider.
Each month, through September, AT News will bring readers an update
on the field replacement process, as related to us by Daily. While every
installation will be different, Daily hopes that sharing his learning
process will help other athletic field managers who are facing the same
transition.
Deciding how to decide
Daily says the process began around the first of the year, although the
decision to go with an infill system was not announced to the public until
mid-February. The advance notice gave Daily the chance to do some serious
research and networking during the Sports
Turf Managers Association (STMA) conference in mid-January.
“I personally talked to more than 75 people who already have infill systems,”
says Daily. “I wanted to know what each one did to maintain them, what
they did during construction, and what they would do differently now.
Quite frankly, the construction specs for these systems are changing constantly.”
“Within three weeks, from not knowing anything — not even having
stepped foot on an infill field — I became just submersed in information
about them. It’s been quite an eye-opening experience. I just hope your
readers will not feel as overwhelmed as I did.”
Under a special clause in its lease from Hamilton County, the team is
picking up the tab for the synthetic turf installation. So it was the
team, rather than the stadium owner, that created the committee that would
evaluate more than 51 companies and make a decision who would get the
contract for an estimated $700,000 project.
A four-person committee evaluated the potential vendors. The committee
included Daily and another stadium staffer and two Bengals representatives. At the beginning of the process,
they faced a field of 51 companies selling approximately 70 different
infill system products. And, during the evaluation process, several companies
went out of business.
“We decided our main criteria was prior NFL experience,” Daily says.
“That way all of our players would have had a chance to play on the surface
we would finally choose. Realistically, there was just no way we could
have evaluated 50+ different companies. So we used that one criteria to
narrow the field down to five.”
From five to two
As the committee’s evaluation entered the critical second cut evaluation,
they decided to create a detailed survey questionnaire asking companies
for specific information on their products including: backing glue, fiber
type, infill material, how seams are handled, location of the yard lines,
G-max values, sub-base recommendations and projected useful life.
“Creating that initial survey was the hardest work we did,” Daily says.
“You have to know which questions to ask because these companies are not
going to give you the information unless you ask.”
This was the point at which Daily’s January research and networking paid
off. Still, he says, the committee’s hardest work, and the part that required
the most diplomacy, was creating the questionnaire. It took three meetings
to narrow the questionnaire from 50 questions to a more manageable 20
questions.
“A big fat concern for us was the location of the five-yard lines that
would be sewn in,” Daily recalls. “Some of them are sewn in
at the end of rolls, some of them are sewn in the middle of the rolls.
Also, we wanted to know whether the product required an e-layer or a pad
underneath it.”
By early February, the committee had received the questionnaires back
and began interviewing representatives from each of the five companies.
Daily says the committee did not find significant differences between
the products being evaluated.
“Once we got all the surveys back, our discussion centered around the
teams of people these companies put together,” he recalls. “The companies
were charged with developing a construction team. In our case we were
wanting to make a turnkey deal. We didn’t want a carpet company blaming
problems on the base company and the base company blaming the drainage
company. We wanted to be able to go to one person and say, ‘You fix it.'”
One of the five products evaluated was AstroPlay,
a product manufactured by AstroTurf maker Southwest
Recreational Industries (SRI). In an example of how quickly things
can change in the synthetic turf business, SRI declared bankruptcy the
day after their representatives made their in-person pitch to the committee.
(See: “SRI,
maker of AstroTurf, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” Athletic Turf
News, February 20, 2004.)
“To be honest, the AstroPlay reps pitched their product to us for about
five minutes before coming right out and telling us that, by the next
day, they would either be bought or declare bankruptcy,” says Daily. “Needless
to say, that meeting was fairly short.”
Daily says that, in narrowing the field to two final competitors, the
major criteria became the company’s prior experience with NFL installations.
After that came the vendor’s proposed choice of an engineering team and,
finally, price considerations.
These two companies were invited to send their engineering and design
teams to PBS to look over the stadium and the field during a two-week
period. Daily says, at this point, the professionalism of both companies
was not in question.
“As the ‘turf guy,’ I was looking more at the construction considerations,”
Daily says. “Other people on the committee were looking carefully at the
end-product considerations, or safety considerations.”
And the winner is…
In early March the committee chose FieldTurf for the project. Daily says
SRI declaring bankruptcy in February played a factor in their choice
“Our major consideration was that FieldTurf has the most NFL installations
in the ground and the best track record, as of now,” Daily says. “We don’t
want to find ourselves in the situation the folks at the Metrodome did.
We think this company is going to stick around.”
Daily says the final price has not been released, in part because the
team decided to add some additional upgrades to the contract. During the
installation, the contractors will also upgrade the stadium’s electrical
system and the field-heating system. Daily says ground breaking begins
Monday, April 18. So now the race to opening day begins.
Daily says the selection process was a lot of hard work, but it was worth
it. There is a lot riding on the result.
“The committee knew that, whatever decision we made, it had to be the
right one,” Daily says. “We knew we couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
After all the problems the team had with the turf over the last few years,
we all knew the worst thing we could hear would be, ‘Omigod, they can’t
even grow fake grass!’ “
More info:
“Paul
Brown to get FieldTurf surface,” The Cincinnati Post,
April 3, 2004“FieldTurf
to replace grass at stadium,” Associated Press / NFL.com, April
2, 2004.“Cincinnati’s
Paul Brown Stadium will replace sod with synthetic turf,”Athletic
Turf News, February 20, 2004.“Bengals
opt for synthetic field,” Bengals Press Release, February 17, 2004.
