George Hall loves his job. At 92, the chairman emeritus of Hall-Irwin Construction, the company he co-founded with Hale Irwin, is still a presence in the office, always with a smile or words of encouragement for employees and an eye toward the innovation.
“How do you describe the most dedicated individual they’ve ever met?” asks Lori Masi, the company’s CEO and Hall’s daughter. “I feel incredibly blessed to have grown up with a father who truly practices what he preaches in every aspect of his life. Dad is the true example of a hard worker.”
Hall admits that “I don’t have to go in, but he respects me when I do and I talk to all the people in the office” in Greeley, Colorado. “When I go out to work, I have a relationship. with the people who have made this company for the last 60 years. You just have to love it. I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t like it.”
Masi says that “the father has lived and breathed construction”, and adds: “We talked about business at the dinner table, we traveled as a family to the workplaces at the weekends”. She says that Hall “taught all of his children the importance of hard work and commitment and to ask the ‘why’ behind everything. He was able to drive an entrepreneurial mindset in all of us. He succeeds because he truly believes that you can do whatever you set your mind to and knows how to work hard.”
Hall-Irwin Construction has been involved in a variety of construction industries, including land development at Cundall Farms in Thornton, Colorado.
Photo courtesy of Hall-Irwin Construction
Innovation and drive
Hall worked with his father in a metal and steel yard in Colorado before going to college and then joining the US Army and serving in the Korean War. He then became a journeyman plumber before obtaining his master plumber certification in 1959.
While working for a developer on several projects alongside Irwin, Hall says the pipeline subcontractor continually interrupted work. He approached his boss with an idea and was told that if he and Irwin could do better, then do it. “We each looked at each other and said, ‘Damn right, we can do this,'” says Hall. The couple joined in 1963, “and we did.”
“This all evolved because of George’s need to solve a groundwater problem to reduce his mining cost.”
—Ed Lafferty, Managing Member, Ed Lafferty Construction Consulting
In the beginning, the challenge was always to do the job better than what was being done. It grew from there, Hall says, and soon the company was involved in underground water and sewer pipes. Finally, his love of innovation really took off when he built the first slurry wall around a gravel pit in North America.
Hall says they saw a problem when the gravel pits used for the pipe bed and road base filled with water. He first designed his industry-changing slurry wall system in 1990 at Siebring Reservoir, northwest of Greeley, based on practices in Europe. With the help of engineers from the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District, Hall’s team created the machinery and processes needed to install permanently leak-free underground walls. While other contractors scoffed at the methods, the solution of pumping the 3-foot-wide trenches used at water storage sites on Colorado’s Front Range with bentonite-rich slurries demonstrated a novel approach to state and is still used as the preferred method throughout the state. .
“You should have seen the crowd of engineers and contractors looking at us, not believing that we could build this slurry wall with sand and gravel up to 25 feet into the bedrock and keep it standing,” he recalls of the first attempt. “We kept the bench straight.”
The watertight wall penetrated 2 feet into the bedrock, creating a nearly 10-acre pond still in use for storing water. More than 30 years later, Hall-Irwin has installed miles of slurry walls for municipalities and private entities and their walls have never failed a state leak test.
“It was a really huge asset to people in the water storage business,” Hall says, adding that people became fascinated with the process that ensured a way to create a “tight bucket” that would allow a safe and leak-free storage in perpetuity.
Hall-Irwin became known as a water storage expert in the Colorado construction industry, specializing in certified slurry cut walls, diversion structures, pump stations, utilities and various other infrastructure needed to provide and deliver non-potable water throughout the state.
George Hall at a workplace in 1970.
Photo courtesy of Hall-Irwin Construction
Ed Lafferty, managing member of Ed Lafferty Construction Consulting, who led several construction divisions at Hall-Irwin for more than two decades and rose to president of the company, says, “This has all evolved out of the need of George to solve an underground water problem to reduce his cost of mining”.
It is not just innovation and drive that has sustained Hall’s success, but also his focus on people and his political acumen. Through involvement with the United States Conference of Mayors, Hall attended a conference in Washington, DC, to discuss western water policy with officials from former President Jimmy Carter’s administration to help resolve the national infrastructure challenges.
The business grew early into several self-executing divisions with hundreds of employees, but had to condense operations in 2008, becoming a construction manager general contractor. It then diversified beyond water storage and land development into vertical commercial projects, with six decades and more than $400 million of successful projects in its history.
Rob Rensink, a vice president at Hall-Irwin, joined the company in 2008 as the financial crisis loomed and says Hall was a stabilizing force in a shaky industry.
Rensink says Hall’s willingness to explore different types of equipment and construction techniques to improve the business proved to be a huge asset. “He wouldn’t accept ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ answers. He listened to ideas and embraced innovation, allowing his employees the ability to fail or succeed when trying something new and different.”
The Milliken Athletic Complex in Milliken, Colorado includes a public building and athletic fields.
Photo courtesy of Hall-Irwin Construction
Industry icon
Hall’s life was not all construction. He has served as a city councilman, mayor of Greeley and state highway commissioner, as well as serving on numerous boards and in many other community positions. Mayor of the city from 1965 to 1981, he has the longest tenure in the city’s history.
“Everybody here makes their mark in whatever job they do.”
—George Hall, President Emeritus, Hall-Irwin Construction
“He had a deep interest in the well-being of this city,” Hall says, noting that his time as mayor meant he couldn’t bid for any jobs in the city while he watched it grow. “Hale and I felt the same way. We cared about the company, our people and the communities where we raised our families. If you don’t, there’s a big hole in your life.”
His contributions earned Hall dozens of professional and community awards and honors, including a baseball field named after him in Broomfield, Colorado.
Harold Evans, a retired Hensel Phelps executive vice president, has known Hall for four decades, both as a subcontractor and through personal contact with the industry. “He’s just an exceptional person who developed a very good utility contracting company,” says Evans. “George was very innovative and still is. I think it was his willingness to be innovative, but also the way [his company] business done, always very ethical and very fair”.
Lafferty says that working with Hall through challenges over the years “only increased my respect for his strong, anchored leadership, knowledge and determination.”
He calls Hall an icon in the construction industry, “because of his work in and around Colorado’s Front Range, because of his dedication to the industry. Very few people in any business, let alone construction, have the kind of of George Hall’s longevity and success,” says Lafferty. “He has dedicated his life to overseeing the success of Hall-Irwin.”
Hall remembers the early days as a young plumber when his boss asked him if he had done everything he could to do a successful job. “Did any tube need just one more turn?” says Hall. “Everybody here makes their mark in whatever job they do. . . . You didn’t want to leave a bad mark on the community you live in.”
The Element by Westin, a hotel in Superior, Colo., was Hall-Irwin Construction’s first hotel project.
Photo courtesy of Hall-Irwin Construction
Hall says that while there are many highlights during his 92 years, he still remembers the first time he put his name on a contract.
“Whenever I put my name on something, I make sure it’s right when I close it,” he says, adding that it was sometimes a scary proposition. Hall says he spent countless hours analyzing the best path forward on a job to ensure it would have the maximum impact on his company and employees.
Masi says this is a hallmark of his character. “Dad demonstrated the power of respect for trade workers, operators and employees who are behind the shovel every day building our communities.”
Hall says it all comes down to “the word trust” and “that’s how I lead my life.”
