DOOSAN
Matt Quinnell is just 29 years old, yet he has logged thousands of hours in construction equipment. The Minnesota native currently works in his family business—Advanced Wall Structures—to build artistic boulder retaining walls in the growing Minneapolis suburbs, including Prior Lake and Shakopee. Today, the company is working on a 100-acre residential development where 210 new homes will eventually be built.
Boulder retaining walls have grown in popularity in the last 10 years, according to Matt. They may vary in size and complexity, depending on the developer’s needs. Using natural stones—many acquired from farmers or landowners in Minnesota—Advanced Wall Structures builds boulder walls in lieu of traditional block retaining walls. The company is regularly involved throughout the development stages—from site preparation with large walls or smaller ones as the development nears completion.
“Our larger boulder walls are site development walls,” says Matt. “We work with the land department when it wants to get those in there.”
Advanced Wall Structures is currently working with Pulte Homes, a national home builder, to develop a new residential community near Minneapolis.
“We will be in this development for the next two, three years at least, maybe four, just as they build the houses,” says Matt. “We’ll try to leave an excavator on the job site, and the builder will put in a work order if it wants a wall done. They’ll do it in different phases. We work with them and we’re flexible; as they need retaining walls, we mobilize pretty quickly and start building them.”
Matt’s parents—Terry and Patti—started Advanced Wall Structures in 1992. A brother, Chris Theis, works side-by-side with Matt to excavate, compact, build, and finish sculpting the land for new home developers.
“We work for a lot of bigger, national home builders as well as local companies to help them develop sites,” says Matt. “We’re a preferred contractor. It took us a long time to get this reputation, and it’s very important to us. Builders just call us, and we take care of what they need. We work on relationships more than anything, and it’s worked out very well for us.”
Boulder Wall Basics
Matt estimates the company builds approximately 60,000 to 70,000 square feet of boulder walls a year, at a variety of heights, using Doosan crawler excavators to set the boulders in place. A critical part of the company’s success is compaction. Operators use the excavators with plate compactors to ensure the ground is ready for the fabric that sits between the dirt and the boulders.
“The fabric makes it so the wall cannot wash out,” explains Matt. “It’s heavy-duty, 8.5-ounce filter fabric.”
Once the fabric is in place, Matt pairs a Doosan excavator with a hydraulic rotating grapple to lift, rotate, and place the boulders to build the walls.
“I’m at maximum lifting capacity a lot of times, even with our big Doosan machines,” he says. “I can pick up rocks that are 11 or 12 tons, even with our big grapple on the end of the arm. I like to let the machines do all the hard work.”
Matt spends up to 12 hours a day in the excavators.
“I tell people that my sandbox just got bigger,” he says. “I love it. I spent all my time when I was a child in my sandbox or watching my dad do stuff in his skid-steer loaders. People always joke with me that I play Tetris all day long, but it’s an extreme form of Tetris with five-ton rocks.”
Building Walls
In the early ’90s, Terry and Patti started their company by building block retaining walls. Matt says a family neighbor invented a retaining wall unit, and it was one of the first block units. Terry traveled the US building retaining walls with the blocks for nearly 12 years. Eventually, Terry settled back in the southern Minneapolis suburbs to grow Advanced Wall Structures as builders were buying up rural property and preparing new housing developments.
Much of the work building block retaining walls was done with compact equipment, specifically Bobcat skid-steer loaders and compact excavators. As the wall projects got bigger, the family purchased a larger crawler excavator that could lift heavier material. In the Minneapolis area, developers' attention shifted away from traditional retaining block walls to something new—boulder walls made from natural stone. Advanced Wall Structures seized the opportunity in 2008 and shifted much of its focus to building the more natural looking walls in new housing communities. Today, Matt says approximately 90% of the company’s retaining wall business is boulder walls and the remaining 10% is the traditional block walls.
“The boulder walls blend into housing developments; they’re more natural,” he says.
Building boulder walls requires larger equipment, particularly for lifting and placing tasks. As the company built its fleet of reduced-tail-swing crawler excavators, it brought work in-house that it previously subbed out to another contractor. Matt and his operators use the nimble excavators regularly at busy residential developments.
“In the past, a lot of the excavation was done by other companies, and we came in and built the retaining walls,” says Matt. “Now we get into a lot more excavation. We move a lot of dirt for the size of our company—on top of just building the block or boulder walls.”
The company has the right formula for building the attractive boulder walls, using a mix of heavy and compact construction equipment to ensure the projects are done properly. Builders continue to call upon Advanced Wall Structures to construct boulder walls in the fast-growing areas outside of the Twin Cities.
Working Profession
Matt Quinnell enrolled in college after high school and had his sights set on being a mechanical engineer. It didn’t take long for him to realize he’d rather be in the cab of an excavator than sitting in a classroom.
“I enjoyed being in a machine and working on job sites, building things,” Matt says. “I’ve been around construction my whole life. When I was younger, I helped my dad on weekends and during summer when I wasn’t in school. I started like anyone else. I had a shovel in my hand when I was 15 years old. Any chance I had to get in a machine and try to learn, I took it and ran with it. It’s all self-taught. I’ve learned from my mistakes and how to work smarter. I remember seeing someone building boulder walls when I was younger, and I said, ‘One day I want to do that.’ There aren’t many companies like ours.”
