Home | Project Delivery in 26 Days—Caltrans Shows How It's Done
Project Delivery in 26 Days—Caltrans Shows How It's Done
At 3:42 a.m. on Sunday, April 29, 2007 the driver of a tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of fuel lost control on a freeway overpass in Oakland, California, and the vehicle flipped onto its side and exploded. Flames shot hundreds of feet into the air—engulfing the roadway deck above the burning vehicle. As temperatures in the inferno soared, the deck section buckled and fell.
Photo courtesy of the California Department of Transportation. Using incentive contracting and streamlined contracting and environmental procedures, Caltrans reopened the roadway in only 26 days.
The overpass was part of a freeway complex that leads to and from the heavily-used San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. When word of the overpass closure reached area commuters, they were sure that months of congestion lay ahead as the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) restored the damaged roadway.
Not only the fire-destroyed section—known as the 580 connector—but also the roadway it crashed onto, the Highway 880 connector had to be checked for safety and possible reconstruction. Later on the day of the wreck, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a declaration of emergency that allowed the use of streamlined contracting and environmental procedures. Officials estimated that it would take 50 days to reopen the 580.
Twenty-six days later, the section was back in service—thanks to Caltrans' immediate response, and use of incentives to bring in a contractor who recognized that for the driving public, time was money. The San Francisco Chronicle named Caltrans Director Will Kempton, "California’s best new hire of the 21st Century."
Photo courtesy of the California Department of Transportation. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger congratulates Director Will Kempton and Caltrans for delivering the overpass repair in half the time expected.
Caltrans set an outside deadline for reconstruction of June 26, then promised a bonus of $200,000—to be capped at $5 million—for every day earlier than that date that the project was brought to completion. Although bids on the project ran as high as $6.4 million, the job was awarded to C.C. Myers Inc., which put in a bid for $867,075—the lowest bid—and won the full $5 million bonus by getting the work done so quickly.
Oklahoma Interstate 40 Bridge Opens in Record Time
On May 26, 2002, the Interstate 40 Bridge at Webbers Falls, Oklahoma was destroyed when an Arkansas River barge went off course and struck its support columns. Each day the bridge was out of service cost the regional economy $430,000. Traffic had to be detoured 57 miles eastbound and 12 miles westbound, and motorists several states away were warned to avoid the area.
Getting the bridge back in service would normally have taken six months. Instead, Oklahoma DOT Director Gary Ridley recognized the urgency of restoring service, and used an incentive contract to get the bridge back in service just 65 days after it was struck and 47 days after construction began. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters (then the Federal Highway Administrator) at the ceremony dedicating the newly opened bridge stated, “I salute the people in the public and private sectors who worked so hard to restore this vital link in America’s transportation system in record time.”
What both of these projects demonstrate is that, in the case of an emergency, Federal and state governments and the private sector can do whatever it takes to restore service. The question remains why it has to take so long to complete transportation projects absent an emergency.
Photo courtesy of the Oklahoma Department
of Transportation.Damage from a runaway
barge to the Interstate 40 Bridge in Webbers
Falls, Oklahoma created a 57-mile detour
for eastbound traffic. The Oklahoma DOT
used an incentive contract to get the bridge
back in service in only 65 days after the accident.
Photo courtesy of the Florida Department of Transportation.Quick action by the Florida DOT and FHWA enabled replacement of the Escambia Bay Bridge on an accelerated schedule after it was destroyed in a 2004 hurricane.
