In the months following August 2005, all eyes were on the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast. It was hard to imagine picking up the pieces, let alone preparing for future storms.
As the historic hurricane’s five-year anniversary approaches, the
New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is transitioning from rebuilding old infrastructure and making it exponentially sturdier, to creating a unified system to protect the Big Easy from another catastrophic event.
Teams of contractors have been working by the Corps’ side day in and day out, responding to the flurry of bid solicitations that comprise the $14 billion
Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk and Reduction System (HSDRRS). Despite aggressive schedules, tough site conditions and increasingly intense competition, they are keeping their eye on the prize: providing New Orleans with a 100-year level of flood protection by 2011.
According to the USACE’s Task Force Hope, which is responsible for the HSDRRS, 146 of the 220 contracts awarded to date have been completed. Seventy-four projects currently are under construction, and another 79 worth $2.02 billion will come to fruition this year.
“Worldwide, the Corps normally spends $5 billion on civil works. New Orleans is spending $14 billion,” says Euclid Michel, senior vice president of the public works division of
Cajun Constructors, Baton Rouge, La. “It’s a tremendous feat they’re trying to pull off in a two-year period.”
Cajun Constructors has been responding to solicitations nonstop since last spring, and the USACE has accounted for about 50 percent of the firm’s overall workload since Hurricane Katrina.
Currently, Cajun Constructors is working on the last two of four task order contracts worth $250 million. In addition to a 100-day emergency project to correct a canal system breach, the work has consisted of constructing thousands of linear feet of concrete T-walls for flood protection in Jefferson Parish.
Cajun Constructors is 95 percent complete with one of the floodwalls, having installed 21 large steel swing gates; placed 30,000 cubic yards of concrete; and driven more than 4,000 steel H-piles to an average depth of 125 feet along the Harvey Canal in Jefferson Parish. The firm’s final task order in Boomtown involves 4,000 linear feet of floodwall built in 30-foot sections with a 5-foot-thick reinforced concrete base slab. Each section is 2½ feet thick and 19 feet tall.
Cajun Constructors’ workforce peaked at about 400 people while working on three of the task orders simultaneously; the fourth and final task order is expected to wrap up in May.
“There has been a ton of work advertised and solicitations advertised since the fourth quarter last year,” Michel says. “It seems like there are projects let or bid on a weekly basis.”
Despite having such a variety of mission-critical projects occurring in a relatively small area, contractors seem to agree there is a method to the HSDRRS madness, thanks to the Corps’ efforts to phase the work and introduce new approaches to project delivery.
Historic Undertaking
Most notably, the Corps is breaking new ground with design-build on the $1.3 billion
Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (IHNC) surge barrier project at Lake Borgne. Wade Habshey, public affairs officer for Task Force Hope, says design-build has proven to be fast and cost-effective for the USACE, as well as facilitate collaboration—all of which will assist prime contractor
Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Group, Baton Rouge, in delivering the nearly 2-mile-long floodwall by June 2011.
Billed as the largest design-build civil works project in the history of the USACE, the IHNC surge barrier is located near the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. Its task is to lower the risk of storm damage to some of the most vulnerable areas: St. Bernard Parish, the Ninth Ward, and the metro and east portions of New Orleans.
Fifty-five small business contractors, 44 of which are Louisiana firms, are part of the project team. About 350 people are onsite daily, with up to 2,000 full-time and part-time workers supporting the effort.
Last October—just 10 months after breaking ground—Shaw completed its first major phase of construction on the barrier’s main wall, driving the 1,271st and final 144-foot-long spun-cast concrete cylinder vertical pile on the wall’s foundation. Crews worked two shifts per day, six days a week to meet this milestone nearly two months earlier than anticipated.
“The team currently is in the process of continuing to drive the remainder of the 660 36-inch diameter steel batter piles and 2,600 concrete closure piles, in addition to construction on the swing barge gate and sector gate on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway,” reports Charlie Hess, senior vice president and project manager for Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Group. “Following that, Shaw will begin work on the vertical lift gate at Bayou Bienvenue.”
Horizontal concrete cap beams at the top of the floodwall will increase the protection level to approximately 20 feet, adding another layer of integrity to the structure and providing a placement area for the parapet walls that ultimately will increase the barrier’s height to 26 feet.
“For a design-build project of this magnitude, in this environment and under a compressed schedule, the work continuously is being conducted on a trestle system,” Hess says.
Shaw relies on two 500-ton cranes fitted with hammers to drive the soldier piles into the soft mud, with a drill on hand to auger out the muck. The batter piles are installed in two sections, welded together and driven to a depth of 200 feet. Closure piles are placed in pre-drilled areas on either side of the soldier piles.
“Once these closure piles are in place, a grout bag made of ballistic-grade nylon is placed between the gap in the piles, allowing the wall to become one continuous structure after the grout hardens,” Hess says.
Challenging alluvial soil conditions required the firm’s geotechnical team to perform a comprehensive analysis using state-of-the-art software packages to investigate soil structure interaction and settlement, and to resolve issues associated with seepage, piping and global stability.
“This approach allowed Shaw to fabricate a significant section of wall elements in advance, expediting design and construction, and improving efficiencies and cost savings,” Hess says.
Altogether, the IHNC surge barrier project will require 201,369 cubic yards of concrete; nearly 300,000 linear feet of concrete-filled 36-inch steel piling; and more than 3 million pounds of steel in the floodgate structures. The 150-foot barge gate will be operational in the spring, at which time work will begin on the 56-foot Bayou Bienvenue lift gate.
Planning Ahead
In addition to design-build, the USACE has begun utilizing Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) on some recent contracts to help team members plan complex projects more effectively.
St. Bernard Levee Partners LLC—comprised of Baton Rouge-based
James Construction Group, the Washington Division of
URS Corp. and the U.S. subsidiary of
Obayashi Corp.—recently completed the ECI phase of the Chalmette Loop Levee project. The partnership sat down with the Corps to help design 7½ miles of new floodwall that will raise the barrier from Highway 46 to the Bayou Dupre Floodgate to 29 feet above sea level. The team is now in the validation phase, during which preliminary design parameters are reassessed. If all goes well, the actual construction phase will be under way in the next several months, with a completion date of summer 2011.
“Generally, if the first two phases come together and we come up with a number that is competitive with the USACE ceiling price, then that phase of work will be awarded to us as well,” says Danny Hester, chief operating officer of James Construction Group, which has been working in New Orleans since helping pump out the city after Hurricane Katrina. “It’s like one contract, but each phase is awarded separately.”
The partnership came together via prior industry relationships for the sake of being able to bond the project, which could total $280 million.
“One of the reasons the LLC has worked so well is because of our ongoing presence in New Orleans. We have people who live here, and we know what it’s like to work with the Corps,” Hester says. “The Corps has really done a good job of scheduling and progressing this work in a manner that least impacts all the work around it. They’ve done an admirable job of making this as good a work environment as possible.”
Economic Effect
In addition to managing fast-track schedules, the biggest challenge for contractors involved in New Orleans USACE projects mirrors what most businesses across the nation are facing: increased competition. Habshey says the Corps used to receive 10 or fewer bids per project; recently, 24 bidders competed for a levee construction contract.
The abundance of Corps work in New Orleans—and the dearth of projects elsewhere nationwide—has caused an influx of out-of-town contractors to enter the marketplace, which historically has not been common in Louisiana.
“With the slowdown of the national economy, there are a ridiculous amount of contractors here. This has driven prices a lot lower in our market,” says Nathan Kernion, secretary/treasurer for
Cycle Construction, a family-owned business in Kenner, La., that performs the majority of its work for the Corps. Currently, the firm is performing several levee restoration projects that involve floodwall retrofits and modifications to drainage pump stations. All of the work is scheduled to be done by June 1, the start of the hurricane season.
On the bright side, labor is plentiful. When Cajun Constructors received its $250 million single award task order contract in 2007, the firm was in a tug of war with nearby petrochemical projects for talent.
“We had 45 crawler cranes on these projects at peak, so finding crane operators and cranes in such a short time frame was tough at first,” Michel says. “But that challenge went away when the economy waned.”
Although New Orleans is well on its way to a having a much safer flood protection system, the consensus seems to be that billions of dollars in USACE contracting opportunities are still on the table—and they’re being doled out quickly.
“I think the Corps market will continue to be strong for the next three to four years. After that, we expect to maintain what they’ve built,” Kernion says. “Hopefully some of the private sector work will pick up once the Corps work starts to go away, and these improvements will make businesses want to come back home. The city has a lot to offer with the port system.”
Once the USACE projects start to wrap up and the economy begins to rebound, Todd Grigsby, president of Cajun Constructors, foresees a return to municipal work. The area’s infrastructure, much of which was installed in the 1960s, had a 50-year life span.
“If you haven’t done any maintenance on public works, it has to come,” he says. “We’re starting to see some recovery money come into municipalities for projects that they may not have funded otherwise.”