THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 11, 1995 TAG: 9512090243
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 216 lines
It rises from the Chesapeake Bay looking like an oil rig plumbing the earth deep below the bay bottom for black gold.
Instead of drilling for oil, this rig is building a bridge, the parallel span to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel., recently renamed the Lucius J. Kellam Jr. Bridge-Tunnel.
The rig is a jack-up barge. Its four legs can be driven down into the bay floor to provide a stable platform for working on the bridge. Other barges are subject to the vagaries of tides and waves, but the jack-up barge can be elevated off the bay's surface.
It's an important distinction that contractors hope will save one year on the job.
``One of our major concerns is the weather,'' said Bob Fouty, manager of the civil division of PCL Civil Constructors Inc., the lead partner in the joint venture erecting the bridge. ``The jack-up barge is our least weather-sensitive piece of equipment.''
By saving time, the joint venture expects to improve the safety on the project and save money.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel District has given builders of the 18-mile parallel span four years to complete the project, but the joint venture expects less time will be needed.
``We hope to complete the entire project in three years,'' by the fall of 1998, said Ted Kirk, project manager.
That's an amazing pace to replicate part of what is called one of the seven man-made wonders of the modern world.
To finish the project a year early, the joint venture partners will work around the clock and open the new bridge sections as they're completed, Kirk said.
The joint venture, led by Denver-based PCL, won the project with a $197.2 million bid. Other partners on the project are The Hardaway Company of Columbus, Ga., Rockland, Mass.-based Interbeton Inc. and Tampa, Fla.-based Misener Marine Construction Inc.
The project involves not only erecting a new two-lane span to serve southbound traffic from the Eastern Shore, but the refurbishment of the existing span. Once finished, the two spans will still funnel traffic into the existing two-lane tunnels.
New tunnels, which could cost about $800 million today, will likely be added early in the next century, said Walter C. Grantz, the district's chief engineer.
The bridge and tunnel district decided to build the second span for three reasons, Grantz said:
Increased safety - the existing two-lane, two-way bridge is known for occasional horrendous head-on collisions.
Rehabilitation of the existing bridge - the entire span would have to be shut down for repairs otherwise.
To handle slowly increasing traffic and prepare for the day when the traffic load would demand four lanes.
The project will not boost the bridge-tunnel's $10 toll, Grantz said. It's being paid for by a combination of cash reserves and a bond issue to be repaid from future toll revenues.
The new bridge was designed by St. Louis-based Sverdrup Civil Inc. The engineering firm designed the original span and acted as its construction manager.
Since winning the contract in June, the joint venture has been marshaling its resources, ordering materials and building a concrete plant and a pre-casting yard at a site on Little Creek in Virginia Beach.
Once construction of the bridge gets underway in about March, the project will employ more than 300 people, directly or through subcontractors. Currently about 90 people are working on the project.
The project also means work for local companies, such as Sadler Materials Corp. of Chesapeake, which is providing the concrete; M.M. Gunter & Son Inc. of Virginia Beach, which is doing all the site preparation, grading and excavation; and E.V. Williams Co. Inc. of Virginia Beach, which is doing the paving.
The project is expected to consume 220,000 cubic yards of concrete and 5,000 tons of structural steel. It will eventually engage a marine fleet composed of about five floating cranes, six tugs and 10 barges.
The jack-up barge, the critical piece to the construction plan, arrived from Singapore in July. The unique platform barge piggybacked aboard a specialized heavy-hauling ship. It and its four sister jack-up barges are the largest of their kind in the world. The jack-up barge here is owned by joint venture partner Interbeton.
The jack-up barge has been driving test piles in the bay floor since it arrived and it is being refitted with a larger crane to handle the heavy pre-cast sections of road.
It will be operated around the clock to drive the piles into the bay floor on which the bridge will sit and to swing the big pre-cast sections of roadway in to place, said Kirk, the project manager.
``We need a stable platform to drive piles and place sections,'' Grantz said. ``We can't have it bobbing up and down.''
All the piles and the road sections will be cast at the yard on Little Creek. The piles, ranging in length from 60 feet to 180 feet, will be spun cast in a warehouse there. The road sections will be cast in forms in the yard. They will be 75 feet and 100 feet long and about 12 feet wide. The bridge will be three pre-case sections wide.
The concrete plant at the back of the yard, operated by Sadler Materials, will produce about 200 cubic yards of concrete an hour.
Concrete will be moved around the yard on conveyors. Once they harden, the sections will be plucked from the forms by big rolling cranes and loaded onto barges to be brought out to the jack-up barge.
The new bridge will feature wider lanes, a 9-foot wide break-down lane and a 3-foot shoulder on the other side. It will also have turnouts for emergencies. The refurbishment of the old bridge will add emergency turnouts every half mile to mile.
The joint venture is building the bridge in five parts. It will first build the two spans on the north end, the small Fishermans Island bridge and the big North Channel Bridge. The new North Channel Bridge will look very different from the old bridge.
The span to the northernmost tunnel from the North Channel Bridge will be built. After that's finished, the span from Virginia Beach to the southernmost tunnel will be erected. Finally the section between the two tunnels will be assembled.
As each section is completed, it will be opened and the renovation of the old parallel section will start.
One big concern on a project of this scale too is safety. Seven men died during the construction of the initial bridge-tunnel.
``If there's a primary goal on this project, it's to complete it without any injuries,'' Kirk said. ``Gone are the days when there were a number of deaths on any big project.''
The joint venture has a full-time safety manager. All employees will have to go through an extensive safety orientation and pass a drug screen. In the event of an accident, all employees involved will have to take a drug test again to determine if drugs or alcohol played any role.
Condensing the project's timetable to three years from four also increases safety. ``There's a tremendous amount of risk in weather and in sea conditions,'' Kirk said. ``We're eliminating the risk of having another year on the water.''
Acceleration also reduces overhead costs such as the costs for using equipment.
Risk control also played into the formation of the joint venture.
PCL typically brings in partners on any project worth more than $15 million. Besides allowing separate contractors to bring different strengths to a project, a partnership spreads the risk of a project over several companies.
``One firm typically doesn't want to bear that risk alone,'' said James W. McGibney, PCL's director of U.S. business development.
PCL and Hardaway had bid together to replace the Coleman Bridge over the York River between the Peninsula and Gloucester. That job as won by Tidewater Construction Corp. but PCL and Hardaway got along well, said Bob Fouty, manager of PCL's civil division.
Tidewater Construction was also a rival on the bridge-tunnel project. It built the original bridge-tunnel in partnership with Kiewit Construction Corp. It lost the contract to the PCL-led group by about $3.5 million. Tidewater's protest of the award to the PCL group failed.
Hardaway, meanwhile, had worked with Interbeton and Misener in the joint venture that built the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel where Interstate 664 crosses the James River between Newport News and Suffolk.
Given their complimentary skills and the tremendous size of the project, the four got together to bid on the parallel span, Fouty said. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover, Color photo]
HUY NGUYEN
The Virginian-Pilot
SPANNING THE FUTURE
BRIDGE-TUNNEL SECOND SPAN
CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE
Graphic
ROBERT D. VOROS
The Virginian-Pilot
SOURCES: The Hardaway Company, Interbeton Inc., PCL Civil
Constructors Inc.
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
[Color Photos]
Construction Photos
HUY NGUYEN
The Virginian-Pilot
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginia-Pilot
These are the joint venture partners building the $197.2 million
parallel span to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. PCL Enterprises
Inc. leads the joint venture.
PCL Civil Constructors Inc.
division of PCL Enterprises Inc.
Headquarters: Denver
Employees: 4,000-plus
Annual volume: about $1.5 billion
Other major projects: Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.;
Denver International Airport terminal and parking garages; Long
Beach (Calif.) Convention Center; Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Aspen,
Colo.; Natchez Trace Bridge in Tenn.
The Hardaway Company
Heavy/Civil Division
Headquarters: Columbus, Ga.
Employees: about 1,000
Annual volume: not available.
Other major projects: Oregon Inlet Jetty; Monitor-Merrimac Bridge
Tunnel on Interstate 664 Tunnel; Olympic runway at Hartsfield
International Airport in Atlanta; 185-foot vertical clearance Eugene
Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah, Ga.
Interbeton Inc.
U.S. division of Interbeton bv, a subsidiary of Netherlands-based
Hollandsche Beton Groep N.V.
Headquarters: Rockland, Mass.
Employees: not available
Annual volume: $9.3 billion (parent company)
Other major projects: Monitor-Merrimac Bridge Tunnel on
Interstate 664; Third Boston Harbor Crossing tunnel
Misener Marine Construction Inc.
A subsidiary of Netherlands-based Interbeton bv
Headquarters: Tampa, Fla.
Employees: 475
Annual Volume: not available.
Other major projects: Monitor-Merrimac Bridge Tunnel on
Interstate 664; Seven Mile Bridge in Florida Keys
KEYWORDS: BRIDGE-TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION by CNB