Las Vegas just keeps on growing, and that means its roadways have to keep growing too. The Nevada Department of Transportation recently awarded the $33.7-million contract to Morrison Knudsen to widen a portion of Interstate 15 to accommodate the ever-rising number of vehicles.

The contract is for a 1.5-mi. (2.4 km) section, stretching from Sahara Avenue to Charleston Boulevard, near the city’s downtown area. However, it’s a fairly complex project, which involves widening the three northbound lanes to five lanes, replacing concrete pavement on northbound and southbound lanes, and widening a section of Sahara Avenue from eight to 12 lanes.

The work will include a complete bridge replacement at Sahara and the widening of two bridges: one at Oakey Boulevard and one at Wall Street.

“Of course it’s very complicated with the traffic; it’s a very busy roadway,” said Bruce Hix, area operations manager for Morrison Knudsen. “The big challenge is to work in and around that traffic. It has to be staged in several different phases to allow traffic to continue to flow,” Hix added.

To keep the road open to traffic at all times, the bridge at Sahara will be done in one-third sections; workers will remove and replace one-third of the bridge at a time. Day and night shifts will keep the work continuous until 1:00 a.m. each morning.

Equipment on the job, most of which is owned by the company, includes a Cat 375 excavator, a Grove 35-ton (31.5 t) crane, a Cat 16G motor grader, a Komatsu PC300 excavator and Komatsu loaders.

Hix noted that the work is supported by a few subcontractors, including Lam Contracting for electrical, Wells Cargo for paving, Amalgamated Safety for traffic control, and Frehner Trucking and Steel Engineers for reinforcing steel.

The job, Hix said, would demand these quantities: for roadway excavation: 57,200 cu. yds. (44,000 cu m); embankment: 103,662 cu. yds. (79,740 cu m); asphalt paving: 26,125 tons (23,750 t); Portland concrete pavement: 85,272 sq. yds. (71,060 sq m); 2,990 cu. yds. (2,300 cu m) of bridge concrete; and 690,100 lbs. (313,682 kg) of rebar.

Work began in early May and is expected to be completed in February 2002.

“Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States and our strategy is to play a major role in supporting this growth,” said Roger Ludlam, president and chief executive officer of the Morrison Knudsen Contractors Group. “This project is a major step in that strategy and continues Morrison Knudsen’s legacy of construction in southern Nevada that dates back to the building of Hoover Dam,” he added.

Other recent Morrison Knudsen work in the area includes the Desert Inn Road relocation and completed flood control projects at the lower Duck Creek detention basin and the western tributary of the Las Vegas Wash flood control channel. Currently, Morrison Knudsen also is working on the Flamingo grade separation project, which is a bridge over the new 215 beltway.

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