Construction Equipment Guide
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Wed September 13, 2000 - Northeast Edition
One is a lonely number but two can be the ticket when it comes to operating two separate projects located in the same area at the same time.
The four-lane highway and its bridges on I-64 from Institute, WV, to the Dunbar Interchange are being expanded to six lanes.
Two separate contractors have been hired to handle these projects. Trumbull Corporation of Pittsburgh, PA, was brought in to expand the highways while National Engineering and Contracting of Strongsville, OH, was hired to expand the four bridges located in the 2.5 mi. (4 km) stretch of highway.
John Buchanan, project supervisor for the West Virginia Department of Highways, said he has meetings with the two contractors to keep the two projects from conflicting. “For the most part, they’ve stayed out of each other’s way,” he said.
The highway expansion project began March 8, 2000. The completion date, however, depends on how much of an incentive Trumbull will attempt to receive. For example, if they had completed construction on Aug. 24, 2000 they would have received an additional $175,000. “Our scheduled completion date is Oct. 15, 2000,” Brian Harvey, Trumbull project engineer, said on Aug. 23, 2000. “But we’re only about a week away from finishing our project.”
Richard Booton, National’s project superintendent, said that they began work on their project May 12, 2000. He anticipates a projected completion date of Nov. 17, 2000. If this goal is achieved his company will have earned an extra $920,000. Their official finish date is not scheduled until Sept. 30, 2001.
Trumbull has three subcontractors assisting in their day-to-day or night-to-night operations. Harvey said that including subcontractors, they have about 20 employees per shift. Their subcontractors are West Virginia Paving of Dunbar, WV, Interstate Traffic Control of Huntington, WV, and Green Acres of Pennsylvania. “West Virginia Paving is one of the big contenders around here because they have all the asphalt,” Buchanan said.
Because of the complexity of the bridge expansion National has had approximately 15 to 20 subcontractors in the field during the course of the project. They have 40 to 45 of their own workers on site in addition to another 25 to 30 employees under the subcontractors.
Traffic and the rainy season were the two biggest obstacles Trumbull encountered during construction. After night operations, 8 p.m. to 5:59 a.m., their traffic control team had to be off the road by 6 a.m. If this time schedule was not followed rigidly Trumbull could have been faced with a $10,000 fine if their traffic control was found in the eastbound lane after 6 a.m. and $5,000 in the west. “There were a couple of days we were close, but we never had a penalty,” Harvey said.
They were able to haul away 6,000 cu. yds. (78 cu m) of dirt from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. after traffic barriers were up. Cat and Komatsu bulldozers were used in the hauling. Other equipment used during the project includes a Komatsu grader, Cat rubber tired backhoe, a Cat scraper, and Ingersoll-Rand rollers. Harvey said much of the equipment used on this project was rented. “We try to utilize all our own but it was tied up in other projects.”
National owns as much as 70 percent of the equipment it used in the project. “We have three John Deere excavators, a 710 loader, a Link-Belt truck-mounted crane and various size cherry pickers,” Booton said.
Where the rainy season made operations more difficult to Trumbull’s project, weather posed much less of a threat to National. “Once National got the footers in weather doesn’t really hurt them,” Buchanan said. However, Booton has considered using stone instead of dirt for fill. “Stone is more forgiving than dirt because it’s not as weather sensitive,” he said. “So if it rains we can still place it.”
Buchanan said it is difficult to give each project a price tag because of the sliding incentives. He does estimate however that the highway expansion will cost $6.5 million and the bridge expansion will average approximately $11.5 million. Trumbull’s project is primarily state funded while National’s project is funded from both state and federal money.