At the Port of Houston, cargo container volume is down approximately 25 percent—no surprise in a global economy that’s still working to find its sea legs. But three years ago, container traffic was booming, and several investments were put in place to prepare for long-term growth.
The Port of Houston Authority, after eight years of record-breaking revenues, determined it needed more robust infrastructure to handle a significant increase in commercial imports and exports. It opened the new Bayport Container Terminal in 2007, spurring construction of several tilt-wall distribution buildings and industrial warehouse facilities.
Civil and marine contractors won multiple contracts to build mega-sized container yards and longer wharfs to meet the port authority’s goal of handling 2.3 million containers within the next 20 years—a capacity increase of more than 200 percent.
In fall 2008, an $80 million cruise terminal opened, with parking spaces for 1,000 cars. Plans for future expansion include berthing and docking space for seven large ships.
When all is said and done, Houston’s Bayport terminal will become the largest container terminal on the Gulf of Mexico.
A Holding PatternAlthough the building boom quieted this year, port construction is merely in a holding pattern until the global economy sees a tangible recovery.
Nationwide, coastal infrastructure plans are in the works from the Atlantic to the Pacific to make way for larger cruise and cargo ships and higher container volumes.
Recent forecasts are pointing to signs of improvement as well. After more than two and a half years of year-over-year declines, import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports was expected to see three straight months of gains in early 2010, according to the monthly Port Tracker report released in December by the National Retail Federation and IHS Global Insight.
Although all U.S. ports covered by Port Tracker—Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah on the East Coast, and Houston on the Gulf Coast—are currently rated “low” for congestion, volume is trending upward. In February, cargo was expected to reach 972,391 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs)—a 16 percent increase over last February’s numbers.
As public funding filters down to states and port authorities, and private funding gradually opens up, some wish-list projects are moving closer to groundbreaking. The Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act (H.R. 3183), approved by Congress last July, has designated more than $21 million for deepwater ports in fiscal 2010.
Market drivers for construction are complex, but a few stand out: the undeniable aging of the nation’s port infrastructure, a relatively healthy industrial construction marketplace, and the mega-project to widen the Panama Canal with a third set of locks. These create the need for U.S. ports to build deeper channels, wider terminals and stronger wharfs to carry higher material volumes.
In 2009, several port projects reached major milestones. Civil and marine contractors called upon their years of experience to accomplish noteworthy feats—especially in terms of safety and scheduling. The lessons learned during these challenging, fast-track projects will come in handy when the next round of infrastructure opportunities comes ashore.
Ahead of Schedule
McCarthy Building Companies, Dallas, is busy wrapping up construction of the $100 million, 1,300-foot Phase I wharf extension at Houston’s Bayport terminal, which will provide capacity to accommodate two additional standard-sized freighters and one new Class E super freighter.
McCarthy crew members built a 3-foot-thick bulkhead that ties back to the terminal’s sheet pile anchor wall, and poured more than 30,000 cubic yards of concrete on a foundation of 900 cased piers to support three mobile gantry cranes.
The team is two-thirds done placing the 18-inch elevated structural slab, with all work scheduled for completion this May.
With about 160 craftsmen working near 17 crawler cranes positioned on barges, the main challenge of the project is keeping everyone safe and accident-free, says Bob Rogers, McCarthy’s project director. Through pre-lift planning, all crew members are aware of equipment locations and schedules each day, and a full-time safety coordinator manages walk-throughs and safety issues for discussion at daily morning meetings.
The second challenge is the schedule.
“This project was bid with a 21-month schedule, which the owner knew was very aggressive,” Rogers says. “It was tough going in. We re-sequenced the schedule and got everyone on board, and it has paid dividends. We are currently one month ahead of schedule.”
Pre-work in selecting the formwork system for the elevated slab also helped minimize project delays. “We have a strong focus on labor productivity and cycling our formwork, and that has helped us tremendously on the schedule as well,” Rogers says.
In addition to meeting the project’s safety, quality and scheduling checklists, McCarthy has exceeded the Port of Houston Authority’s goals for awarding 35 percent of the contract, or $35 million, to small or disadvantaged business enterprises. It is self-performing the majority of the rest of the work.
Opportunities should be available for smaller firms in the years to come as development continues in the region. The Texas Department of Transportation, for example, recently bid out a contract to add two lanes of traffic to Port Road, which connects state highway 146 to Cruise Road at the port terminal.
Reading the Tides
Cianbro Corporation’s Baltimore office also self-performed the majority of work on the award-winning Magellan Trestle & Dolphins project for Magellan Terminals Holding, a Tulsa, Okla.-based firm.
Magellan’s expansion of operations at the Wilmington, Del., marine terminal nearly doubled the site’s storage capacity for ethanol, fuel oil and gasoline.
Cianbro’s scope of work consisted of placing civil and mechanical fuel uploading lines; constructing a 1,000-foot pile-supported pipe trestle; a concrete-capped mooring dolphin for vessel berthing; additional dolphin repairs; and installation of all associated piping and mechanical systems to convey unloaded fuels from tanker vessels.
While Cianbro performed civil work to clear the landslide and drive 79 pipe piles for the trestle bents, it fabricated all of the trestle and dolphin steel in Baltimore and then transported materials by barge to the jobsite for installation. The preassembly of piping allowed mechanical installations to take place concurrently with civil work and helped the team avoid staging conflicts.
Timing was essential, with just seven months to complete the project by January 2009.
“We did a lot of modularization and pre-fabrication work to overcome the time challenge,” says Brian Walsh, Cianbro’s senior project manager for industrial projects. “We preassembled some structural steel trestle sections, and we preassembled some welding related to piping while the pile driving went on. As soon as the piles were installed, we were able to install pre-bent sections of piping.”
Working on floating equipment in the shallow water mudflats, which were subject to tidal currents, posed a serious equipment challenge. The crew could not use standard barges; instead, it employed sectional barges nicknamed “flexi floats” for cranes, piping, steel, manpower, and so on.
“It was hard to know what to expect from the mudflats until we got the equipment in the water because the conditions were so varied,” Walsh says. In addition, removing the mud stuck to barge equipment was a daily challenge. To contend with the ebb and flow of the tides, crews often put in hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings to take advantage of optimal water conditions.
With several operations taking place over water, safety precautions like life vests and harnesses were required almost 100 percent of the time for approximately 25 Cianbro workers.
The project, which received several best-of-2009 honors, is indicative of the type of work sustaining project backlogs for contractors that specialize in marine construction. Cianbro’s industrial group is currently keeping its employees busy performing environmental upgrades for industrial clients along the Chesapeake Bay.
“Things are busy in the industrial sector. We could be busier, but we’re holding our own,” Walsh says.
Doubling Cargo Capacity
W.G. Yates & Sons Construction Company, Philadelphia, Miss., also is garnering praise for its work at the 158-acre Dames Point Container Terminal at the Port of Jacksonville, Fla., which opened in January 2009. The new facility has doubled the Jacksonville Port Authority’s (JAXPORT) capacity to handle containers, and it is expected to create 1,600 new private sector port jobs in trucking, distribution and related services, as well $870 million in economic benefits for the area.
Working closely with the British design engineer HPA Halcrow and Associates, the contractor constructed two 1,200-foot berths; a half-mile docking facility with unloading cranes; underground utilities; stormwater conveyance; and an array of pipes, conduits and ducts for power and communications.
The new terminal is used to unload container ships sailing to and from ports in Asia.
The project was comprised of three phases: dredging 1.75 million cubic yards of the St. Johns River; underground utility and piping installation; and surface paving using a high-performance, recycled power plant byproduct.
W.G. Yates self-performed 78 percent of the job, including sitework, piping, paving and electrical work, at a construction cost of $162 million. Six months of preconstruction meetings and brainstorming sessions to discuss all value engineering and constructability options resulted in a 30 percent reduction in the contract’s price.
“We did a lot of out-of-the-box thinking with Halcrow. They were very perceptive and worked very well with us, or else the project wouldn’t have come to fruition,” says Bob Breland, W.G. Yates’ project director.
JAXPORT pushed the team to complete a large part of the project seven months ahead of the original contract schedule to allow for a rail-mounted gantry crane’s early arrival. Yates met the challenge, building 600 linear feet of dock prior to the client’s required dates.
“We tailored our schedule to accommodate the early delivery of the cranes. We’re proud we were able to meet the challenge of completing those milestones earlier than was originally required,” says Gary McDonald, W.G. Yates’ senior project manager.
Extensive coordination was required to keep material deliveries flowing smoothly and keep all workers out of harm’s way.
“It was a major logistical challenge to keep the equipment working in different areas and materials unloaded safely, with no recordables,” McDonald says. “I attribute our accomplishments to my staff, which I call the Yates ‘A-Team.’ And without the support of the owner, it would not have been a success.”
In the long term, JAXPORT has more work queued up, with plans to build a sister terminal at Dames Point. Although this project is on hold for now, it is indicative of the expansion trend at ports nationwide.
“In the five- to 10-year window, we will see more marine work and other work we service out of our industrial group, such as power plant construction, environmental remediation, and refinery and chemical work,” Breland says. “We’re just in a lull right now.”
When is the best time to start marine construction work? One might assume the answer is springtime, but for marine contractors in areas where the local economy centers around tourism, the busy season for construction—winter—has just ended.
John Mikutowicz, owner of
AGM Marine Contractors, Inc., Mashpee, Mass., can attest. His company builds and repairs waterfront structures such as ferry terminals, piers, jetties—anything and everything along the water—from Southern Maine to northern Connecticut. Much of AGM’s volume is in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
“Winter is our busy time in the marine industry,” he says. “Most of our gear is floating out on the water, and with this being a tourist area, no one wants you around in the summer. Come July 4, no one wants to see construction equipment.”
Mikutowicz is one of many small business owners working to stay afloat at a time when competition has quadrupled, with 16 to 20 bidders vying for jobs that used to see three or four bidders, he says.
AGM is currently performing a handful of small jobs for the U.S. Coast Guard and working to finish construction of a ferry terminal for the Woods Hole Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket Steamship Authority on Cape Cod. Private work has slowed to a near standstill this year.
“There are plenty of structures that need repair, but there is not a lot of money to go around,” Mikutowicz says.
But, having been in the marine business since 1977, he’s confident the market will come around again. In the meantime, he’s working to find new ways to finish jobs more quickly and efficiently: “We’re running a pretty tight ship.”