He delivered on budget, on time

He doesn't spit nails or crack heads. He has a disarming, likeable grin. He loves video games, and hip-hop music thumps from the loudspeaker of his pickup truck.

All in all, he's about unlikely a boss as you could imagine for a $66 million construction project so complicated some said it couldn't be done.

Meet Mike Sellers, project superintendent for the Taubman Museum of Art.

He didn't design the new museum. He didn't pay for it.

He just got it done -- on budget and on time.

"I get a kick out of proving people wrong," Sellers says.

Steve Lobb, Sellers' boss at Balfour Beatty Construction offices in Fairfax, Va., admitted the company initially had reservations about making Sellers top dog at the site.

After all, the museum was one of the most complex projects it had done. And Sellers was young -- just 29 when work began in the spring of 2006.

"We would not normally have put someone in that position as young as Mike was," Lobb said.

Still, they believed in Sellers. In the end, the company decided to surround him with the best people it could find and let him take a crack at it.

And now look.

"He did a marvelous job," Lobb said.

He's afraid of what?

Here's a secret about Sellers, straight from Benicia Hobbs-Sellers, his high school sweetheart and now his wife:

"He's scared of heights," she said. "Which I find kind of funny, myself."

Hobbs-Sellers once dragged her husband onto a roller coaster at Busch Gardens called The Big Bad Wolf.

He didn't like it. "I definitely saw the fear there," said Hobbs-Sellers, who lives in the couple's home in Maryland. Sellers stays at a Holiday Inn Express in Roanoke during the week, and returns to Maryland each weekend.

But there's another side to the roller coaster story. Sellers once went to King's Dominion and rode every roller coaster there, with a white-knuckled grip -- just to prove he could.

In some ways, Sellers is still that young guy on the roller coaster. "I look at it as a challenge," he said of the museum. "It's not often I'll step down from a challenge."

"He's trying to prove to everybody and to himself that he can do the job," his wife said.

There isn't much left to prove. Roanoke's curvaceous zinc and stainless steel museum -- which has been compared to such things as trains, birds or even the "Wreck of the Flying Nun" -- is now an accomplished fact.

His mother couldn't be prouder.

"I knew he was going to be somebody," Phyllis Sellers said.

Pushers and pullers

How did he do it?

First of all, forget that old stereotype of the construction foreman with the cigarette clenched in his teeth, brow-beating some poor schlub for not doing things exactly his way. According to Lobb, Sellers is one of a new breed of construction bosses who try to get along with workers rather than get in their faces.

"I'm not one of those screamer-shouters," Sellers said. "It's a waste of my time and energy."

Not that Sellers backs away from a conflict. One day last summer, as he talked with a reporter, Sellers spied an electrical cord that was missing its third prong, known as the ground pin. The pin reduces the possibility of electrical shock.

Cords without ground pins are forbidden on the Taubman Museum work site. Sellers opened his pocket knife as he talked, reached for the cord, and sliced it in two.

Problem solved.

"They hate me for that," he grinned.

"Construction is confrontation every day. If it wasn't for conflict, these buildings would never get built," Lobb said. On the other hand, Sellers "has some people skills. He doesn't let his ego get in the way of good judgment." He also said Sellers asks him a lot of questions.

And no matter whom Sellers may have butted heads with over the course of a day, Lobb said, "he ends it with a handshake and a smile."

Sellers said his knowledge of human nature is expanding.

"Some guys are pushers. Some guys, you have to pull their strings. I'm learning how to deal with a lot of these guys."

He started young

Sellers was raised in Norfolk by a single mother. "I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood. You name it, I've probably seen it," he said.

But he kept his nose clean, playing football and working at Burger King. "I was never a troublemaker. My mother said I was too slick to get caught."

He settled on his career path early, he said, while watching the building of a baseball stadium at Old Dominion University, across the street from where he lived.

The project superintendent let him carry things around and pick up trash, Sellers said, and in turn he got to see the big equipment and watch the supervisor giving orders. He also liked watching the project come together. "I said, 'That's what I want to do.' " Sellers was 10 or 11 at the time.

"He was striving to be someone," recalled Phyllis Sellers, who works with abused and neglected children in Norfolk. "He always took that extra step. I'm just glad God allowed me to see his accomplishments and what he can do. We're truly proud of Mike."

Sellers still talks to his mother on the telephone every day. She follows the progress of the museum on the museum's Web cam. Sometimes, when he knows his mother is watching, Sellers turns to the camera mounted on the former Shenandoah Hotel building, now an actors' dormitory for Mill Mountain Theatre and home to Twist & Turns, and waves.

Sellers majored in construction management at Norfolk State University. He went to work for Centex Construction, now Balfour Beatty, after college, working first as an office engineer. He spent most of his time reviewing construction drawings.

But Sellers wanted to be out on a work site "from the first day," he said. He has since worked on other job sites, most recently a logistical center at Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia, where he was the assistant project superintendent. The art museum project is his first stint as the boss.

As superintendent, Sellers spends much of his time at the site, overseeing the construction work. There is also a project manager for the art museum project, Bevan Mace, who spends much of his time in the office coordinating construction drawings and doing administration work, Sellers said.

Sellers was never one of those who thought the museum could not be built.

"I knew it was going to come out looking pretty much the way Randall intended it to look," said Sellers, referring to the project's architect, Randall Stout.

Still, he said, "the coordination was a challenge" -- between workers, between documents and reality, between metal and glass. "At some point they have to mesh and fit together."

Some people think the museum's odd arcs and angles were fixed by satellite, Sellers said, but it wasn't quite as exotic as all that. Instead, they used a computer-age surveying tool called a "Total Station," which can be set up almost anywhere and pinpoints the position where an iron girder or curving stainless steel roof panel needs to go.

And what does Sellers think about the new museum?

"I think it's a good building," he said. "It's a good project for Roanoke. I've seen a lot of people change and actually like the building. Life is change."

Indeed, Sellers' days in Roanoke are numbered -- Lobb said they will probably call him back to the Northern Virginia office soon. Lobb suspects Sellers won't like it very much. "He gets a little antsy sitting behind a desk."

He also said the museum project is a great addition to Sellers' resume.

"Hell," Lobb said, "I'll probably be working for him one of these