The last time Construction Executive saw Jeff King, he was standing between two hulking frameworks of steel and concrete on a patch of frozen ground in Arlington, Virginia, trying to describe the future. On that glacial day in January 2022, Amazon’s HQ2 project was very much a work in progress—a little more than halfway through a projected three-and-a-half-year timeline—but during a hard-hat tour with CE, King insisted that in just 18 months, it would be transformed into Metropolitan Park, a beautiful, world-class corporate campus. (See this article.)

Darned if King, a vice president with Clark Construction Group and HQ2’s project manager, wasn’t right. Amazon employees started moving in this past June. In July, when we reunited with King for another tour—no hard hat needed—the future was fully here, in the form of twin 22-story buildings, sleek and state-of-the-art, with more than 2 million square feet of office space, flanking a verdant, 2.5-acre public park. MetPark is dazzling in its polish and scope, a multibillion-dollar megaproject that looks exactly the way King told us it would a year and a half ago.

“One of the things our team is most proud of is, when we embarked on this job pre-pandemic [breaking ground in January 2020], we made a commitment to finish in the first or second quarter of 2023,” says King, sitting at an outdoor table in the cooling shade of HQ2’s North Building, while a small crew working nearby applies finishing touches to the campus’ dog park—part of a few dozen Clark team members still active on the jobsite. “And here we are.”

And here CE is, back to ask Jeff King what he’s been up to in the last 18 months.

The last time we talked, in January 2022, you were a few months short of topping out both buildings, the facades were starting to go on, and this park that we’re sitting next to was a warzone. What were the broad brushstrokes of the project from that point to now?

When you came out last time, we were moving quickly, and that didn’t really stop until we finished the job. We topped out in March–April of 2022, and then the big goalpost was, we had a year to finish. In between there, we had milestones of making sure that the facade was finished when it was supposed to be, so we could make sure the buildings were watertight. We had weekly and monthly milestones on all the interior finished floors as we moved our way up the buildings.

But the thing for us that was most important was getting spaces accepted by the client and by the architect, to show that we were able to deliver on their expectations. We had milestones for that as early as maybe six months prior to the job completing, because in a job of this scale, you really have to start that process early on.

Something else that we started to plan for on day one was making sure our partners at Arlington County were ready to provide inspection resources. That was another milestone that we tracked heavily. Here we are, maybe six months prior to the job completing, and we’re looking to get areas final-inspected and closed out from a permitting standpoint, because it just takes that much time to work your way through the scale of these buildings.

A MAIN PRIORITY FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM WAS MANAGING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITY, WHICH WAS ALREADY PRETTY DENSELY BUILT OUT WITH RESIDENCES, OFFICES AND RETAIL. HOW DID THAT WORK OUT?

I believe we ended on a very positive note with the community. When you put yourself out there with the community and invite them into your project and are being over-communicative, you never know what you’re going to get back. I think it’s safe to say that the positive interaction we had with the 4,000-plus residents that live in the 360-degree surrounding area was awesome. I learned a lot, I feel like they learned a lot, and it was easier for our client to interact with our neighbors.

HOW COMPLICATING OF A FACTOR WAS THE JOBSITE ALSO BEING SO CLOSE TO SENSITIVE AREAS LIKE THE PENTAGON TO THE NORTH AND RONALD REAGAN WASHINGTON NATIONAL AIRPORT TO THE EAST?

Probably the biggest coordination piece that we had was communication on our tower cranes—making sure they understood how tall our tower cranes were. We were moving them up to different levels at certain times as the job progressed, and then we had to move them back down. Helping communicate that with the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is one of the major coordination pieces that we had to do on this job, particularly being so close to the airport.

AT THE PEAK OF THE PROJECT, YOU HAD FIVE TOWER CRANES OPERATING ONSITE, AND TRAFFIC-COPPING THEM WAS A MAJOR UNDERTAKING FOR YOUR TEAM. WHEN DID THAT START RAMPING DOWN?

We topped out around March–April 2022, and I would say anywhere from two to five months from there, we started taking them down one at a time. With the cranes, it’s always a balance of when you take them down to finish the job versus having them for ease of moving things around. We just make sure we communicate with all of our trade partners about what’s the best plan for us to manage the job effectively with vertical transportation when we make the decision to take them down.

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF CLARK’S WORK AT THE HQ2 JOBSITE NOW? ARE YOUR TEAMS MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH THE WORLD’S BIGGEST PUNCH LIST?

I would like to say it’s not the world’s biggest punch list, but it could lend itself to be knowing that it’s several million square feet. Our team started finishing spaces in this building as early as almost a year ago, so September of 2022, we started the punch-list process. Today, yes, we do have a punch list that we’re completing, and I still have a team here supporting Amazon as the buildings come online and people are moving in. At the same time, there are also Amazonians that we’ll be welcoming at HQ2 later this summer, so we still have a team finishing the spaces on those upper floors.

YOU’VE SPENT MORE THAN THREE YEARS OF YOUR LIFE ON THIS PROJECT. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO FINALLY SEE PEOPLE HERE, USING EVERYTHING THE WAY YOUR TEAM BUILT IT BE USED?

You know, on opening day, when the first Amazonians came here, I went to Commonwealth Joe [coffee shop] and then went into the lobby and went in through the security access point and just kind of sat in the in the space and watched. I was able to sit there and think about the journey from the day I got the first phone call that we were going to build this building to that moment, and it’s hard to put into words how impactful it was for our company and for my team here at Clark and, obviously, for me personally.

I still remember some of the initial faces that walked into the building for the first time and what they looked like, but I also remember the first dog that ever came into HQ2. It was a golden retriever, and to watch the dog get excited about a new space that wasn’t home or wasn’t a dog park was really cool. And every time I walk through the facility, there’s always something new that I didn’t catch before, somebody who uses a space differently than I maybe would have thought when we were putting it together.

Those things, it’s just hard to put into words. But I’m really thankful for Amazon trusting Clark to build this project for them and for Clark to trust me—with a great team around me—to bring it across the finish line.