No Detail Is Too Small as Workers Feverishly Prepare for Opening Day
By Daniel LeDuc
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
World War II had Patton. The Nationals ballpark has Ronnie Strompf.
And Strompf is irritated right now.
He's striding down a concourse at the ballpark-in-progress, and the loudest sound he hears is a single worker with a grinder, shooting sparks in one corner. "This is too quiet for the amount of work that should be going on in here," Strompf growls.
Trim from walking eight miles a day around the ballpark, he's the person who has to make sure the $611 million project in Southeast Washington is finished by spring. And that's why he's breathing down the necks of 900 employees, scattered high and low throughout the sprawling site.
At 62, Strompf is something of a legend in the world of Washington construction. He helped oversee work on the National Science Foundation in Arlington County, the new Department of Transportation headquarters in Southeast and office towers in Tysons Corner as vice president of Clark Construction. He was project superintendent of the city's most expensive building, the Washington Convention Center.
When city officials were considering whom to select to build the ballpark, they told Clark that "if Ronnie is not part of this, the deal's off," said Allen Lew, who was chief executive at the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission at the time and worked with Strompf on the convention center.
Accolades do not fall easily on the man who has taken only five days off since the groundbreaking May 5, 2006. "It's not about me; it's about the workers here," he declares.
In just the past 20 minutes, Strompf has eyeballed hanging water pipes, double-checked electrical wiring, run his hands over the seams of bathroom sinks and wrinkled his nose at bubbled-up wallpaper in a women's restroom.
He has made sure nearly two dozen electricians would be joining the job by week's end and that ceiling tiles in the team's clubhouse would be up by the time city inspectors arrived.
He has also asked nearly every worker he has met -- only half-jokingly -- "You gonna be done today?"
Construction projects are like battle campaigns. There are leaders laying out goals and planners plotting strategy. And then there are the field generals, who carry out the orders, make sure those objectives are met, care for the morale of the troops. The best field generals improvise when necessary and get the job done.
Strompf is only too mindful of the calendar, with an exhibition game between the Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles set for March 29 and the official season opener against the Atlanta Braves the next night -- to say nothing of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI scheduled for April 17.
Strompf is supervising more than 50 major subcontractors and dozens of smaller ones. He has watched the workforce grow exponentially since the initial excavation of the 21-acre site. He has overseen massive cranes lowering the steel superstructure into place and the installation of the gigantic scoreboard as well as 41,000 deep blue seats and 100,000 square feet of Kentucky bluegrass on the field.
From the outside, the ballpark looks nearly complete. But inside, construction crews are installing thousands of miles of electrical wires and television cable, putting up drywall, building cabinets and hauling in stoves and ovens. The bar just behind home plate for fans with the most expensive season tickets was put in and ripped out three times until it was right.
Strompf arrives at the ballpark by 5 o'clock most mornings, meets daily at 8 a.m. with the major subcontractors and spends the rest of his day attuned to the details of the project. The shoddy wallpaper prompted him to whip out his BlackBerry to call the foreman overseeing the wallpaper hangers: "I'm seeing amateurish work. That's something we're not going to tolerate on this job." He hangs up and mutters, "I better check the other bathroom."
The wallpaper there is just as bad. But the bathroom in the visitors' clubhouse gets a better grade. Strompf points to the urinals and notes, "They just put those in today."
Strompf leaves the site by late afternoon most days for dinner at home in Wheaton with his wife, Nancy. By 7:30 p.m., he is in bed with the latest Clive Cussler novel until he drifts off to sleep by 8. But the ballpark is in his dreams. He's usually wide awake three hours later, scribbling notes to himself on the nightstand. Lately, he has been waking up every two or three hours, thinking of what to do the next day. And the kind of worries that set his mind racing show just how much work goes into a ballpark, beyond putting down turf and switching on the scoreboard.
The other night he was awakened by an inner urge to increase momentum on a hallway where fire sprinklers had to be lowered to fit installation of ceiling tiles. At the rate things were going, it would take 10 days to finish. At his morning meeting with the subcontractor, Strompf decided to tell him, "You've got five."
He said he works from two maxims: "Be demanding to the point of being unreasonable." And, "Never accept the ordinary."
"There are a dozen ways to do something, and it will come out the same," he said. "One way is the most efficient, and I'm always trying to find that."
For all his relentlessness with the subcontractors, Strompf is greeted like a co-worker when he visits the construction crews. Instead of dreading his approach, many say, "Hey, Ronnie," as he comes to look over their shoulders.
"He's always picking on me," said stonemason Robert Radke, who is teased daily by Strompf as he lays slate in the stands behind home plate. " 'Did you lay two stones today or three?' He's a great guy."
Strompf grew up the son of a plumber who was disappointed when his son didn't follow him into the trade but told him to never forget what it's like to be a worker. He dropped out of the University of Maryland after a year, began working construction and became a project superintendent by the time he was 24.
"He's the same whether he's dealing with the owner, dealing with a laborer or dealing with the mayor," said the sports commission's chief executive, Gregory O'Dell. "He makes people feel comfortable around him."
Said Strompf's boss, Clark executive vice president Greg Colevas: "The number one thing that makes him good is his ability to get people working together. He gets everybody playing together in the sandbox."
It was Strompf's idea for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to make a visit to the ballpark earlier this year to rally the workers and keep their enthusiasm going on the fast-paced project. Nationals players have toured, and several of them hit practice balls -- "A couple definitely hit home runs," Strompf said.
He gathered the balls and had them printed with a notation that says, "First Hits at New Nationals Park." He has given them out to workers and the children of visiting dignitaries and now has a box of Louisville Sluggers signed by third baseman Ryan Zimmerman as his next batch of giveaways.
That combination of affability and drive has kept the ballpark on schedule.
"The last game at RFK -- at that point, I knew there was no turning back," he said. "This is something the city is really looking forward to. . . . The fear of failure is huge, and that's the best motivation for me."
Until now, Strompf's connection to baseball involved playing third base at Virginia's Fishburne Military School and watching the occasional game. It has been like no other project he has worked on, with the public so focused, and able to track, the new major league park for Washington.
Fans can watch construction via two Internet cameras. Others routinely walk around outside -- or try to sneak inside -- to check it out.
And the news media are chronicling major milestones such as last month's turf installation. City officials constantly tour. The Lerner family, which owns the Nationals, visits regularly, and so do Major League Baseball executives and even umpires. (They told Strompf that a video room near the visitors' dugout had to move so coaches couldn't get a closed-circuit glimpse of catchers' signals to pitchers. So Strompf is moving it.)
"There's so much public attention, and you don't want to let people down," Strompf said, recalling his childhood and the ballpark used by the old Washington Senators. "The memories I have of Griffith Stadium, it's neat to be bringing that back for a new generation."
The ballpark project has allowed him to meet baseball players, tycoons and politicians and even earned him a visit to the White House.
Earlier this year, Strompf led White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten on a ballpark tour, and Bolten reciprocated.
Strompf visited the West Wing, got to see the Oval Office and was struck by how small many of the rooms are. Oh, and something else: "I saw a couple of screws missing in the hardware."
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