Farewell to Ashland Vaughn: ‘The reward at the end of the day and sense of accomplishment are great’

What do RTD’s commuter rail lines have in common? Their construction was overseen by Ashland Vaughn, who retires this week after a 26-year career with the agency – and held an integral role in the buildout of public transit in the Denver metro region.

“Seeing what you put together, being a value and use to the community, I almost think of it like volunteer work,” said Vaughn, RTD’s Senior Manager of Construction and Public Facility Maintenance. “At the end of the day, the reward is seeing it for the greater good of the community. That's always been a big driving force in what I do.”

Vaughn, who grew up in North Carolina, has been drawn to building, designing and fixing things since childhood, and he started working at a civil engineering firm at 16.

“I did mostly water and wastewater treatment plants, and some other utility work, which is pretty inglorious,” Vaughn said of his early work with the firm. “I saw the importance of those basic things. I started off doing a lot of surveying and design, and then the ultimate construction of those plants.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Duke University, Vaughn moved to Colorado to rock climb – and to advance his civil engineering knowledge with a master’s degree at CU Boulder. His first job after grad school was as a staff engineer for Fox Engineering, doing environmental and geotechnical foundation design, including some of the initial wall designs for RTD’s southwest corridor.

Vaughn’s career with the agency began when a former boss, who had left Fox for RTD, “called me up one day and said, ‘Hey, you should check this place out,’” he recalled.

Vaughn joined RTD as a compliance officer. In that role, he performed the preliminary environmental site assessment for the west corridor.

At that age and in that position, Vaughn said, “I started to learn about safety certification, closing out projects and getting more into contractual responsibilities, estimating, scheduling and project controls, and all those things that came with project management. I could see myself one day in a project management role. I was doing all the things to fill up my toolbox so that I could be that person later.”

From there, Vaughn became a construction engineer. His aptitude enabled him to work on two important light rail projects: the track remodel around 14th and Stout streets, prompted by the Colorado Convention Center expansion; and the Central Platte Valley construction. He became the de facto deputy project manager for the west corridor.

Having assumed this position just before public passage of FasTracks, Vaughn was also entrusted with developing and maintaining the implementation schedule for all corridors. He remembers plastering an entire conference room wall with poster-size schedules, meeting weekly with others to run multiple scenarios that accounted for staffing, construction and cash flow. The question before the group, Vaughn said, was “what would be the optimal way to go about building it, because you can't do all six at once. You can't stack them all; you’ve got to stagger. And what does that look like?”

Next, Vaughn was honored to be named project manager for the Gold (G) Line. Being embedded in the environmental impact statement process, he came to understand how to work with the federal government to properly achieve various steps along the way. He credits tutoring from others to know how to pull through.

“It was an amazing time, very fast paced, working with a lot of great teams,” he said. “We had a lot of support through consultants and the folks at RTD as well. It was very exciting.”

Then, with tax revenue dropping and commodity prices rising, RTD elected to pursue a $2.2 billion public-private partnership method to finance and deliver the A Line and G Line, the first segment of the B Line to Westminster, procurement of 56 commuter rail cars and a commuter rail maintenance facility, the project collectively called Eagle P3. In addition to managing the Gold Line, Vaughn was asked to manage construction of all of Eagle.

“I was terrified. It was huge,” Vaughn said. “Instead of one corridor, you've got three and a commuter rail maintenance facility. I viewed it as a huge opportunity, but a lot of responsibility, a lot of stress. And just unique.” He added: “There were bumps on the road and challenges, but learning how to work through those with great teams, great people, made it all worthwhile.”

Ten years ago, with the Eagle project winding down, Vaughn moved to another big rail corridor – North Metro, now known as the N Line. He calls managing this project one of the most difficult parts of his career because the line traversed some of the most powerful industries and challenging terrain in the region. To move ahead with the N Line, Vaughn successfully negotiated agreements with Atlas Roofing, The Farmers Reservoir and Irrigation Company, Denver Water, the National Western Complex, the Colorado Department of Transportation, Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway. Securing these agreements and rights-of-way were critical for the contractor to begin building. The Skyway Bridge, he added, was borne of the reality that “going aerial” would be the easiest and most cost-efficient way to place a rail line through that area next to the South Platte River.

“To get the line started and to (East) 124th (Avenue) was a huge accomplishment, with what had to be done and the challenges, the topography and everything else to overcome,” Vaughn said.

He acknowledges that RTD has entered a transitional phase in which it is necessarily focusing on state of good repair projects that include coping panels and rail reconstruction. These are challenging to complete on a system while it is operating, Vaughn said, “but we’ve got to go in and fix it. It's the whole ‘breaking eggs to make an omelette’ (analogy). There are going to be disruptions, and my job is to minimize that disruption as much as possible to the patrons and the jurisdictions and our own internal customers.”

As Vaughn prepares to close out his career at RTD, he reflects upon the pride shared among colleagues on rail line opening days, the lessons he learned, the mentors who taught him. The best part, he said, remains the people he has met. “That's, in the end, who gets it done. It's the people. It's the teamwork.”

Vaughn concluded: “It's been a heck of a ride. It's been wonderful. It's been literally blood, sweat and tears. But the reward at the end of the day and sense of accomplishment are great, and I’ve just been so fortunate and grateful for the opportunity and the people that I've worked with.”

Below, Ashland Vaughn, right, stands at the yet-to-be-completed Denver Airport Station on the A Line with Lesley Thomas, Denver’s former City Engineer, and Rick Clarke, former RTD Assistant General Manager of Capital Programs. When this photo was taken, Vaughn was Construction Manager of the Eagle Project.