The company, with about 2,000 staff members nationally, works

in many areas, from sports to civic. The Denver office deals in areas including transportation planning and street engineering, hydrology/hydraulics, bridge engineering and aviation planning and design.

Timothy G. Cahill, an HNTB vice president and principal architect and director of design, is director of design in terms of the Denver stadium project.

Cahill, based in Kansas City, joined the firm in 1980 after receiving a master's degree of architecture from the University of Illinois and a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas.

The stadium's metal lattice-work upper skin evolved "because no one was interested in doing a stadium that spoke to old-time architecture," said Cahill. "We wanted to speak to the future of Denver."

Yet brick at the base helped introduce a material used throughout Denver so visitors could "relate to a material they're used to."

Other projects with which Cahill is credited include the new Midway Airport terminal in Chicago; and the expansion and renovation of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, Calif.

The firm cites design of projects that include the Pontiac Silverdome, Qualcomm Stadium, Giants Stadium and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

After the firm completed the terminal building at Denver International Airport, flight facilities around the world -- including Inchon, Korea, and Munich, Germany -- have become a sort of specialty for Fentress Bradburn Architects.

So have convention centers, office buildings and other civic structures, including the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas; the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo.; and the Natural Resources Building in Olympia, Wash. Closer to home are the Colorado Convention Center, the 1999 Broadway Office Tower and the Jefferson County Government Center.

Fentress early on worked in rehabbing and renovating historic buildings downtown, including the Masonic Building and the old Navarre building into the now-defunct Museum of Western Art.

The firm's impact on the stadium design took hold after the city-supported design advisory committee got involved, said Curt W. Fentress, a founder and partner of the firm, which was established in Denver in 1980. Outside ramps seen in early designs disappeared.

Fentress' career began with I.M. Pei and Partners and Kohn Pedersen Fox; it was with the latter firm that he moved to Denver as a project architect. Shortly after establishing his own firm, he met future partner James Bradburn.

Fentress is a graduate of North Carolina State University with a bachelor's degree in architecture.

That's five years after Bertram Bruton moved here from Florida. Bruton, a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he received his bachelor's degree in 1953, has worked on many public projects in Denver. They include Sakura Square as well as the DIA passenger terminal, the Colorado Convention Center and the new Civic Center Office Building.

Bruton said his firm employs from nine to 18 people. In the case of the new stadium, the firm had the responsibility of "coordinating between disciplines," including specifications for mechanical, electrical and structural engineering, he said.