Peter Brown B.E. (Civil), PMP
Principal Construction Manager
Sound Transit
- Favorite Hobby: Skiing and hiking – Brown love being in the mountains and started teaching his three-year-old daughter to ski this year.
Peter Brown has been with Sound Transit since 2011, with an additional 10 years’ experience with transit systems in London and Sydney, Australia. A certified Project Management Professional (PMP), for the last five years Brown has served in the role of Principal Construction Manager for the systems elements of Sound Transit’s University Link light rail extension.
The University Link project consists of 3.15 miles of twin tunnels and two underground stations. As Principal Construction Manager, Brown was responsible for the construction, commissioning and testing of the systems elements- including track, signals, traction power, communications, and supervisory control and data acquisition [SCADA] systems.
In addition to the extension work, the U-Link systems scope included the complete replacement of the existing SCADA system in use on the operating alignment. Under Brown’s leadership, the technology upgrade was completed with minimal impacts to light rail operations and the rarely seen joint bus and light rail operations in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel.
Through prototype testing it was determined that a full scale floating slab system would be effective at minimizing the impact of ground borne noise and vibration of a future extension under the University of Washington campus to sensitive research instrumentation used at the University. Systems construction was contracted using a General Contractor/Construction Management (GC/CM) delivery strategy; this was the first time Sound Transit used GC/CM for systems construction.
The opening of the $1.9B extension 6 months ahead of schedule and $200M under budget would not have been possible without Brown’s attention to detail and exceptional coordination and collaboration.
Joe Gildner, Executive Project Director of the University Link Extension project noted, ”Peter’s proactive approach and ability to plan allowed the work to proceed without delaying the civil constructors. He quickly identified issues and more often than not proposed technically sound resolutions/work arounds that were acceptable to all. He also took the time to mentor Agency staff assigned to the project that were not as familiar with systems construction or GC/CM contracting and highlighted lessons learned for management attention and incorporation into future systems design and GC/CM construction efforts.”
"It is critically important that you develop very detailed systems interface definitions early in the project and monitor compliance with those definitions very closely throughout construction. Seemingly small deviations during the course of construction, if not properly considered and communicated, can completely undermine system functionality and create a lot of rework at the end of the project when schedule constraints are often extreme."
