In the 1980s, as the Getty Institute outgrew its Roman villa-style museum near Malibu, the Getty Center began taking shape. The initial tasks included purchasing a site in the Santa Monica Mountains, hiring Richard Meier & Partners as the architect, and submitting a master plan to the Los Angeles Planning Commission.

After many meetings in which nearby homeowners expressed concerns, the plan was approved. It imposed clear height and space limitations. The Center would have to fit within a curving boundary, with its main building area not to exceed 505,000 square feet.

In 1988, Dinwiddie Construction Company was named the Center's general contractor. Founded in 1911, Dinwiddie had built the original Getty Museum in the 1970s. Now Dinwiddie would hire and supervise subcontractors to do the various jobs.

One such firm was B&E Engineers, a civil engineering, land planning, and surveying company. B&E had worked for the previous landowner, who wasn't a developer. This person couldn't find a good deal and was about to donate the property when the Getty came looking. Since B&E had already designed plans for the site, the Getty kept it on.

The first thing Dinwiddie began was the seven-story garage, to accommodate the thousands of workers. Meanwhile, subcontractor B&E took charge of most of the site engineering. It developed plans for grading the land and putting the major infrastructure—water, sewers, storm drains, and the road—in place.

James Emerson, president of B&E, recalls the grand scale of the Getty project. B&E had to work with a large group of subcontractors and consultants. Everyone toiled in parallel, starting one portion while another was in progress. That kind of "fast-tracking" kept the work flowing.

Ebensteiner Co. was the Getty's principal grading contractor. Since removing the excavated earth would have required thousands of truck trips through residential areas, Ebensteiner didn't take that approach. Instead, it moved big piles of dirt from one part of the site to another—seven times over 3 1/2 years.

Emerson says another Getty requirement was aesthetics. The site had to look nice, and soon. Workers hid ugly concrete structures by coloring or shaping them differently, or by obscuring them with foliage. Rather than wait for nature to take its course, they made the landscaping "mature." That way, the grounds would appear finished in two years instead of ten.

Another problem was unstable land. After the project was underway, geologists discovered a potential landslide area with excessive moisture. Rather than remove the slope, they opted to stabilize it. Ebensteiner put in a sub-drain system to suck out the water.

The 1994 Northridge quake led to more changes. The engineers had anticipated lateral, or horizontal, movement during quakes, but the '94 quake issued a series of vertical jolts. Workers retrofitted the Center's steel joints with new welding procedures. Fortunately, the land was largely unaffected.

After most of the site problems were solved, the building continued apace. The Getty Center premiered in December 1997 to near-universal acclaim—thanks in no small part to the construction team's efforts.