Under construction since 2023 and SLATED to open in time for the beginning of the 2026 NFL season, The new Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., WILL house the Buffalo Bills and its fans in modern style. The new stucture is replacing the original Highmark Stadium built in 1972.
Among other amenities, the 62,000-seat, $1.7 billion stadium will feature stacked seating to channel fan noise down to the field and provide protection from the elements. It will also be outfitted with extensive radiant heating to enhance spectator comfort, all while incorporating Buffalo’s most cherished landmarks and icons in its design.
To ensure the power and reliability needed to support the demands of the new stadium and 4,000 local residents, utility New York State Electric & Gas called on Victor, N.Y.-based O’Connell Electric Co. to help expand the existing Big Tree Substation in Orchard Park. Thanks to O’Connell’s expert work, the region will enjoy a new era in electrical efficiency, reliability and Buffalo Bills mania.
A planned expansion
“O’Connell Electric was originally founded in 1911 by John ‘Jack’ O’Connell and has been in business for over 113 years,” shared Michael Parkes, president and COO of O’Connell Electric. “In 1968, my grandfather Walter left the company he was working at to go out on his own and purchased O’Connell Electric from Jack. Jack was kind enough to help my grandfather out on a project, and my grandfather was so grateful that he kept the name of the company as it was to honor Jack and his family.”
Purchased in 1968 for $75,000, “O’Connell Electric logs several hundred million dollars in annual revenue and has 800 employees,” Parkes said of the firm’s significant growth.
“We’re very diversified and handle everything from light switches to lightning bolts, and simple service calls to 765-kilovolt (kV) substation projects—anything in the electrical space. We also tackle a lot of complex jobs that not all contractors are interested in bidding on,” he said.
Parkes also noted that some of his firm’s most notable jobs included the wire installations over Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon and the wire installed between three buildings in Chicago for famed high-wire artist Nik Wallenda.
“We’re an approved substation contractor for NYSEG and their parent company, Avangrid. They’re one of our largest utility customers,” Parkes said, who added that O’Connell Electric was presented with Avangrid’s “Supplier of the Year” award in 2019 based on the strength of their partnership.
“Big Tree Substation was an existing substation that the utility decided to expand to improve grid reliability and support load growth,” Parkes said. “And while thousands of area households rely on the Big Tree Substation, its most prominent customer is the Buffalo Bills, whose stadium is located right across the street.
“The utility already owned a 4-acre property adjacent to the Big Tree Substation, though it was a forest, so we had to clear all the trees first,” he said. “The project essentially involved the construction of a new greenfield substation next to an adjacent substation that it connected to.”
According to Parkes, the project involved rebuilding the existing station as a three-bay, breaker-and-a-half arrangement connecting to National Grid Line 151. It also included the installation of stormwater management features; establishment of a temporary laydown/staging area, marshaling yard and access to the site from the north; and modification and relocation of seven existing 115-kV and 34.5-kV poles and electric lines in the vicinity of the new expansion.
“We had to build access roads into the site, and the project required the construction of hundreds of foundations and used hundreds of thousands of pounds of substation steel and many pieces of high-voltage equipment,” Parkes said.

A journeyman lineworker adjusts a 115-kV disconnect switch at the Big Tree Substation expansion
Seasons of challenges
The project kicked off in 2019–2020 and involved up to 45 crew members at the height of activity.
“The utility sourced all of the high-voltage equipment and steel for us to receive and handle, and we purchased all of the power and control cable, distribution switchgear, high-voltage bus and connectors, and all grounding products, conduit and other components,” said Tom Sweeney, project manager and estimator for O’Connell Electric. He added that the project was particularly challenging due to the lack of space on-site.
“We had to set up a separate staging area because we couldn’t come through the original station,” he said. “The existing station was also still energized, so a lot of coordination was required to schedule planned outages with the utility.”
Other challenges came along, too.
“In 2020, we were well underway clearing the site—which involved us removing trees, bringing in dirt and stone, and raising the ground level by 5 feet—when the pandemic hit and everything around us started shutting down,” Sweeney recalled.
“Avangrid still wanted to keep the job moving forward, but new rules applied. We immediately bought a 40 x 40 tent so that we could hold meetings and keep our crews warm. Every morning, our general foreman assembled the crews to discuss that day’s tasks, any safety-related matters and who was working where, and everybody had to wear masks and maintain 6 feet of distance.
“We also had to discuss with Avangrid how to handle tasks that normally took two people (such as pulling wire), which was a big challenge,” Sweeney said. “For example, we could only have one person on a lift when normally we’d have two, so we incurred additional costs to operate two lifts in order for our crew members to maintain the required distance.”
On a positive note, Parkes said, “most of the work was outside, not inside under recirculated air, so that worked in our favor. In addition to designating operators of certain equipment to reduce the number of people in the mix, our guys did a great job of maintaining distance, sanitizing everything and adhering to the rules, and, amazingly, there were only two to three cases of COVID among our whole team during this project.”
While upstate New York is notorious for its cold, snowy winters, “we had no major weather issues through most of the job,” Sweeney said.

An overhead view of the Big Tree Substation expansion at 80% completion, next to the existing station that was still energized and in service during construction.
“We built the underground foundations during the winter of 2020–2021, and thankfully we had a very mild winter that year. Though when we did our final tie-in, we got 5 feet of snow that filled the station and required our crew to spend three days just moving snow so that we could do our final connection.”
As for protecting themselves from the elements, “we provided a lot of cold weather and rain gear so that our guys could bundle up and stay dry,” Sweeney said. “We set up large space heaters in the tent so that they could get warm during break times, and we encouraged them to take breaks and get warm whenever they needed to because safety is paramount at O’Connell Electric.”
Sweeney confirmed that, despite the supply chain issues and product delays rampant during the pandemic, the O’Connell Electric team didn’t have many issues sourcing products.
“The utility prebought all the project’s switches and breakers ahead of time, stored them in a warehouse in Syracuse and we transported them to Orchard Park,” he said. “We ordered the items we were required to purchase just prior to the pandemic, so things were fortunately in motion.”
Finally, “we had a great experience with our subcontractors,” Sweeney said. “This was one of the smoothest projects I’ve been a part of.”
“Our main contractor was Sam and Son Co. for site and civil work, and we’ve worked with them for a long time,” Parkes said. “They’re a great partner to us and were instrumental in executing the work.
“At the same time, O’Connell Electric and Avangrid have had a great relationship for as long as I can remember, and our teams work extremely well together,” he said. “We share a common goal of getting projects done safely, in a high-quality way, and completing them on time and on budget. This job presented challenges for them, too, and our teams came together as well as anyone could ask for, which speaks to the strength of our partnership.”
“Despite unexpected weather issues that delayed some of our scheduled outages, we completed the job on time in April 2022, and Avangrid was extremely happy with the work we did,” Sweeney said. “From the electrical work to the aesthetics of the property, and even the water retention pond we had to construct to address the water from the substation—all done by local labor—they were thrilled with the outcome.”
Lessons learned
“Overall, this was a very complex job given the number of outages and interconnections and [the] extent of planning that had to take place,” Parkes said. “The substation itself was standard, but the outages, line moves and movement of transformers out of there—all while maintaining service—was complicated. It really reinforced the importance of planning and forward thinking relative to outages and sequencing of the job to complete it as efficiently as possible,” he said. “We knew that going in, but this job required us to take a long outlook on the project and understand how decisions today affect those down the road, because many outages had to be planned months in advance.”
Planning is critical
Sweeney agreed that planning and communication were extremely important.
“We had weekly meetings with the O’Connell team, our subcontractors and colleagues from Avangrid so that everyone knew the direction we were going, and there was always lots of communication going back and forth,” Sweeney said. “I was very involved with my foremen daily and was on-site several times a week, so I always had my finger on the pulse of the project and was able to respond to issues quickly.”
As for lessons learned, “I didn’t know a lot about transmission work going into this project and got a great lesson on that,” he said. “I had excellent leaders behind me who helped guide me through the outages and the transmission portion, and everything I learned has allowed me to move forward with more confidence.”
“This was the largest project I’d run in my nearly 20-year career with O’Connell Electric, and it afforded me the opportunity to coordinate a number of different trades,” Sweeney continued. “From the management and leaders behind me to my field leaders on the front line, everyone did a great job. O’Connell has always been best-in-class, and this project was something I was proud to be a part of.”
“Our name is synonymous with the highest level of quality and we take a great deal of pride in everything we put the O’Connell name on,” Parkes agreed.
The project received a 2022 NECA Project Excellence Award in the “Substation/Interconnect” category.
“This project speaks volumes about our management team, field leadership and craftsmanship, and the association with the Buffalo Bills added a bit of extra ‘star power’ to the mix,” he said. “At end of the day, this is what O’Connell does and why we’ve been around for 113 years.”
Images courtesy of O'Connell Electric Co.About The Author
BLOOM is a 25-year veteran of the lighting and electrical products industry. Reach her at [email protected].