[2] The granite material honors Collier's love of hiking through the nearby White Mountains (New Hampshire) with the MIT Outing Club (MITOC).

[3][1] The void represents the absence of the slain officer,[2] and is shaped like an oblong stone from a memorial cairn which had been constructed at trailside by Collier's friends from MITOC.

[4][2] The underground foundation, an essential part of the structure, is made of reinforced concrete to resist the spreading forces produced by the shallow arch it supports.

[2] The polished, tapered stone blocks were carved to a precision of 0.5 millimetres (0.020 in) using robotic saws and milling machines, and then surfaced with final finishing by hand.

An opening in the structure frames a view of the spot where he was sitting in his MIT Police car responding to a call for help, when he was ambushed and shot.

[3][7][6][2] Raised stainless steel buttons, encoding Collier's police badge number "179" in Braille, are installed into the pavement beneath the memorial arches, to discourage its use by skateboarders.