American Airlines Arena
Miami, Florida, United States
Client: Miami-Dade County
Parsons Brinckerhoff Role: Owner’s Representative
Miami-Dade County approved construction of a new sports arena/entertainment complex in downtown Miami to replace an existing sports facility. The new facility—American Airlines Arena—was designed to increase revenue-generating capacity, a key issue that will both help keep the city’s sports franchises from relocating to other cities and spur further development in the downtown area.
The 20,000-seat, $183 million multi-purpose arena has three concourse levels for seating, concessions, corporate suites, clubs, restaurants and shops, as well as an 1,100-space underground parking area. It features state-of-the-art acoustics, utilities, and event transition systems. The 680,000-square-foot (63,200-square-meter) facility also includes live television production capabilities, emergency power generation, lighting and video distribution systems, an ice plant, storage facilities, and basketball practice areas and weight/training rooms.
Parsons Brinckerhoff served as owner’s representative during the fast-track construction. In this role, the firm was responsible for overseeing the development agreement between Miami-Dade County and the facility’s developer to keep the project progressing on time and within budget. The project scope included overall design and construction coordination; risk management; project controls; budget and schedule monitoring; constructibility reviews and value engineering; construction inspection and safety monitoring; operations and maintenance planning; and Minority/Disadvantaged/Small Business Enterprise program compliance monitoring.
The phased, fast-track delivery method employed by the construction manager was necessary, but presented constant challenges to all parties. Therefore, Parsons Brinckerhoff was essential to the owner in explaining changing conditions, and providing advice as to approving or denying requests for changes. Parsons Brinckerhoff saved the owner over $2 million by recommending alternatives to certain requested changes.