INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
Trailer pump provides “X-cellent” results
Working with the X Games essentially meant creating a pair of technically challenging, world-class skate parks – in a week’s time. Jensen Concrete Pumping Services’ successful performance for the organization has ensured them another go-around in next year’s games.
Pumper helps make all the Backside 180s, Noseblunt Stalls, Pop Shove-its, and Fakie 720s possible at this year’s X Games
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rad Jensen, founder and owner of Jensen Concrete Pumping & Services (CPS), sees himself as a traditional concrete-pumping professional. And the tagline of his company – Serving all 10,000 Minnesota Lakes’ Concrete Pumping Needs – reflects that. However, during one particular week — one full seven-day period — Jensen puts on his specialty concrete pumping hat and does so in a huge way. During that challenging week, Jensen CPS becomes the concrete pumping company of choice for the X Games which, for the last three years, have originated from US Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis. Shotcreting with a Schwing SP 1000 trailer pump and using a skill set that continues to grow with each annual session, the company played a key role in transforming the Minnesota Vikings’ home turf into what, for four days, became the centre of the skateboarding, BMX, and Moto-X world. Jensen’s work helped bring the event to life, and score big points for “cool” with the teenage children of some of his employees. A medal-winning performance, indeed.
Let the games begin To the uninitiated, the X Games are an annual event that showcases highly skilled athletes in the extreme sports mentioned above. Owned and produced
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Canadian Concrete Pumper 2020
by ESPN, the X Games have steadily grown in popularity since their introduction in 1995 (total on-site attendance for last year’s games was 119,000). They offer both summer and winter competitions, and have proven a viable, bankable commodity for the owners and sponsors alike. As one might imagine, getting a facility like US Bank Stadium prepped for each year’s event is no small task. And it’s made even more challenging by the fact that some events — and the features needed for them — change from year to year. According to Jensen, they worked alongside a company called California RampWorks, which heads up the X Games’ course design and construction. “The crew from CA RampWorks is a phenomenal group of people to work with,” he said. “It’s amazing to see the transformation that takes place over the course of one week of intense effort. We work as the concrete subcontractor to them and have been doing so since we were first contacted for the 2017 games. At that time, though we had shotcrete experience doing things like walls, pools, and small construction projects, we’d never done anything of this scale. But we love a challenge; we were grateful for them believing in us, and took it on.” Things have apparently gone well since that first contact. The customer was pleased with the results and Jensen has
been providing its shotcrete expertise every year since then.
Needing CPR From a strictly job-size perspective, Jensen’s role in the X Games build might seem minor. After all, the entire project only involved application of 155 yards of concrete material. As it turned out, even getting that modest volume down was not without its initial challenges. “This has been an extremely busy year for us,” Jensen said. “So, we had our regular trailer pump booked for the entire time X Games needed us to do their work. As a result, we had to do some last-minute scrambling to secure a replacement. But the folks from Schwing and their CPR (concrete pump repair) division in North Branch stepped up to rent us a mint-condition SP 1000 trailer pump. Not only was that a life-saver for us, it also gave us an opportunity to see some of the features built into that newer model. Two of those — smoother hydraulics and an electric stroke limiter, which controls material output directly from the remote — came in handy on the X Games job.” Helping Jensen out of a bind was a pleasure for Jerry Anderson, CPR’s vice-president and general manager. “I’ve known Brad since he started out in this business a few years back and really like him,” said Anderson. “So, when he
