George Hall loves his work. At 92, the president emeritus of Hall-Irwin Construction, the firm he co-founded with Hale Irwin, is still a presence in the office—always with a smile or words of encouragement for employees and with an eye toward innovation.

“How does one describe the most dedicated individual they have ever known?” asks Lori Masi, company CEO and Hall’s daughter. “I feel incredibly blessed to have grown up with a father who truly practices what he preaches in all aspects of his life. Dad is the true example of a hard worker.”

Hall acknowledges that “I don’t have to come in, but I am respected when I do, and I converse with all the people in the office” in Greeley, Colo. “When I go out on a job, I maintain a relationship with the people who have made this company for the past 60 years. You just have to love it. I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t love it.”

Masi says that “Dad has lived and breathed construction,” adding: “We talked about business at the dinner table, we would travel as a family to jobsites on weekends.” She says Hall “taught all his children the importance of hard work and commitment and to ask ‘why’ behind everything. He was able to drive an entrepreneurship mindset into all of us. He is successful because he truly believes that you can do what you set your mind to, and he knows how to work hard.”

Hall-Irwin Construction has been involved in a variety of construction sectors, including land development at Cundall Farms in Thornton, Colo.
Photo courtesy Hall-Irwin Construction

Innovation and Drive

Hall worked with his father in a Colorado metal and steel yard before attending college and then joining the U.S. Army and serving in the Korean War. He then became a journeyman plumber before earning his master plumber certification in 1959.

While working for a developer on several projects alongside Irwin, Hall says work was continually held up by the pipeline subcontractor. He approached his boss with an idea and was told that if he and Irwin could do it better, go for it. “We looked at each and said, ‘Damn right, we can do it,’” Hall says. The pair incorporated in 1963, “and we did it.”

At the start, the challenge was always to do the work better than it was being done. It grew from there, Hall says, and soon the company was getting involved in underground water and sewer pipelines. Eventually his love of innovation really took flight when he built the first slurry wall around a gravel pit in North America.

Hall says they saw an issue when gravel pits used for pipe bedding and road base were filling up with water. He first crafted his industry-changing slurry wall system in 1990 at the Siebring Reservoir in northwest Greeley, based on practices in Europe. With the help of Central Colorado Water Conservancy District engineers, Hall’s team created the machinery and processes necessary to install permanently leak-free underground walls. While other contractors scoffed at the methods, the solution of pumping the 3-ft-wide trenches used at water storage sites in Colorado’s Front Range with bentonite-rich slurry proved a fresh approach for the state and is still in use as the preferred method statewide.

“You should have seen the crowd of engineers and contractors watching us, not believing we could build this slurry wall in sand and gravel 25 feet through to bedrock and keep it standing,” he remembers of the first attempt. “We kept the bank straight up.”

The watertight wall went 2 ft into the bedrock, creating a nearly 10-acre pond still in use to store 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 tremendous asset to people in the water storage business,” Hall says, adding that people grew fascinated with the process that ensured a way to create a “water-tight bucket” that allowed safe, non-leaking water storage in perpetuity.

Hall-Irwin became known as a water storage expert in the Colorado construction industry, specializing in certified slurry cut-off walls, diversion structures, pump stations, utilities and various other infrastructure required to provide and deliver non-potable water throughout the state.

George Hall on a jobsite in 1970.
Photo courtesy Hall-Irwin Construction

Ed Lafferty, managing member of Ed Lafferty Construction Consulting, who ran several construction divisions at Hall-Irwin for more than two decades and rose to company president, says, “This has all evolved due to George’s need to solve a groundwater problem to reduce his mining cost.”

It’s not only innovation and drive that kept Hall successful but also his focus on people and his political acumen. Through involvement with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Hall attended a conference in Washington, D.C., to discuss western water policy with officials in former President Jimmy Carter’s administration to help solve national infrastructure challenges.

The business grew early into multiple self-performing 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 commercial vertical projects, with six decades and more than $400 million of successful projects in its history.

Rob Rensink, Hall-Irwin vice president, joined the company in 2008 when the financial downturn was approaching and says Hall was a stabilizing force in an unstable industry.

Hall’s willingness to explore different types of equipment and construction techniques to enhance the business proved to be a strong asset, Rensink says. “He would not accept answers such as ‘that is the way we have always done it.’ He would listen to ideas and accepted innovation, which allowed his employees the ability to fail or succeed when trying something new and different.”

The Milliken Athletic Complex in Milliken, Colo., includes both a public use building and athletic fields.
Photo courtesy Hall-Irwin Construction

Industry Icon

Hall’s life wasn’t just construction. He has served as city councilman, mayor of Greeley and state highway commissioner as well as serving on numerous boards and in many other community positions. City mayor from 1965 through 1981, he has the longest tenure in the city’s history.

“I had a deep interest in the well-being of this town,” Hall says, noting that his stint as mayor meant he could not bid on any city jobs while he watched it grow. “Hale and I felt the same way. We cared for the company, our people and the communities we raised our families in. If you don’t do that, there is a big hole in your life.”

His contributions earned Hall dozens of professional and community awards and distinctions—including a baseball field named after him in Broomfield, Colo.

Harold Evans, a retired executive vice president of Hensel Phelps, has known Hall for four decades, both as a subcontractor and through personal industry contact. “He is just an outstanding individual who developed a very good utility contracting company,” Evans says. “George was very innovative and still is. I think it was his willingness to be innovative, but also the way [his company] conducted business, always very ethical and very fair.”

Lafferty says that working with Hall through challenges over the years “only increased my respect for his strong and anchored leadership, knowledge and resolve.”

He calls Hall a construction sector icon, “thanks to his work in and around the Front Range of Colorado, thanks to his dedication to the industry. Very few individuals in any company, much less construction, have the kind of longevity and success of George Hall,” Lafferty contends. “He has devoted his life to overseeing the success of Hall-Irwin.”

Hall recalls the early days as a young plumber when his boss would ask if he had done everything he could to make a job successful. “Did any pipe need just one more turn?” Hall says. “Everybody here leaves their mark on any job they do.… You didn’t want to leave a bad mark in the community you live in.”

The Element by Westin, a hotel in Superior, Colo., was the first hotel project for Hall-Irwin Construction.
Photo courtesy Hall-Irwin Construction

Hall says that while there are plenty of highlights over 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 is right when I sign off on it,” he says, adding that at times it was a scary proposition. Hall says he spent countless hours analyzing the best route forward on a job to ensure it would have the most impact on his company and employees.

Masi says this is a hallmark of his character. “Dad demonstrated the power of respect to trade workers, operators and employees who are behind the shovel every day building our communities.”

Hall asserts that it all comes down to “the word trust” and “that is how I run my life.”