Rocky economic times, green infrastructure, lean construction and helping the industry be heard were themes at the Associated General Contractors of America convention in Orlando on March 17-20.

AGC has to be about “the industry, not about the politics,” says AGC’s new president, Ted Aadland, CEO of Aadland Evans Construction Inc., Portland, Ore. “We can’t afford to be a partisan organization. We need to work with elected officials in both parties on the issues.” Aadland said AGC is like “the sleeping giant”–members can “wake up” to influence those who make codes and regulations and reach out to other construction associations to “help the industry speak as one resounding voice.”

Collaborative activities like a coalition with the manufacturing and energy sectors were among the highlights called out by J. Doug Pruitt, chairman and CEO of Sundt Construction, Phoenix, as he looked back at his past year as AGC president. On March 17, AGC signed a partnership agreement with the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, to advocate for alternative pathways to graduation for the nation’s at-risk youth among other efforts. “We have to be loud and vocal,” Pruitt said.

The next generation of employees will expect companies to have environmentally friendly practices, said Jan Berman, president of MechoShade Systems Inc., New York City. In one of several panels addressing green issues, he noted that just as the Americans With Disabilities Act transformed from being an added factor to being integral in design and construction, so will Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

Scott Snelling, a bridge engineer with New York City-based Hardesty and Hanover, noted national efforts under way to create LEED-like rating systems for bridges and roads. Dominique Lueckenhoff, head of the Water Protection Division/Office of Watersheds for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 3, told attendees that the global market for environmental products and services is projected to double from $1.37 billion a year to $2.74 billion by 2020.

In the current economic climate, the conference included workshops on how contractors can avoid work stoppage and payment delays with owners and pursue strategies for recovering money if an owner defaults on a project. Because lien laws vary by state, contractors should adopt problem-avoidance strategies in drafting contracts and managing risk, said Holland & Knight’s Stephen Shapiro. Those include careful preparation of payment applications, insisting on proof of owner financing and enforcing contract provisions.

The scramble for work can lead contractors to let their guard down, but they need to be even more vigilant now to assure they will be paid for their work, says Robert Burns, an attorney and partner with Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP, Wichita, Kan.

The convention, which drew 2,400 attendees, included the second session of AGC’s newly formed Lean Construction Forum. Chairman Chuck Greco, CEO of Houston-based Linbeck Group, said the multidisciplinary forum is working on a curriculum for teaching lean construction techniques that involves 92 hours of instruction and bronze, silver and gold levels of certification. The forum’s next session will be at the AGC Building Division meeting on June 9-12 in Midway, Utah.

The project will rebuild the Congress Parkway interchange, which connects Interstate 290 to the north-south leg of Chicago’s Wacker Drive, the double-decker downtown artery made famous in the movie “The Blues Brothers.”

After opening the initial round of bids from three prominent Chicago contractors on Feb. 11, the city disqualified two, then rejected the third for being too expensive. The lowest bid, at $73 million, came from a joint venture of F.H Paschen and Cabo Construction Corp. That bid was rejected because the company submitted a bid deposit of $50,000 instead of the required 5%, or $3.6 million. The city engineer’s estimate was about $100 million.

The next-lowest bid, $78 million, was submitted by James McHugh Construction Co. The bid was rejected, says Shannon Andrews, spokeswoman for Chicago’s Dept. of Procurement Services, because McHugh didn’t sign a required affirmative-action compliance plan.

The remaining bid, $85 million, came via Walsh Construction Co. The city rejected all three. Walsh subsequently filed a lawsuit claiming it should have been declared the winner, but the city’s rejection of all three bids eliminated the basis for the legal action. The contractors have either not returned ENR’s phone calls or declined to comment.

On April 3, the city will open new bids and expects to award the project shortly thereafter. Work on the two-year reconstruction is expected to begin sometime in June. Rebuilding the interchange will reconfigure ramps to make traffic flow more smoothly and safely. It will also create 3 acres of new green space.

Wacker Drive is a two-level viaduct whose upper level provides six lanes of normal traffic at street level. Its lower level offers express travel for through traffic and access to area buildings for delivery vehicles. Intermittent, center-lane ramps connect the upper and lower levels. About 60,000 vehicles use the drive daily. It is home to a number of Chicago landmarks, including the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.

Reconstructing the Congress interchange is one of three major projects that together will completely rebuild 1.2 mi of Wacker Drive’s 55-year-old, north-south leg. Its east-west leg was rebuilt in 2002 at a cost of about $200 million. The north-south rebuild is funded for $366 million.

The other two phases will rebuild both levels of the road, add more than a foot of overhead clearance to the lower level, separate the lower level’s through-traffic lanes from the delivery lanes, improve utilities throughout the corridor and replace many of the center ramps with landscaped medians at street level.

T.Y. Lin International designed the new interchange. Alfred Benesch & Co. is designing the first section of Wacker Drive that will be reconstructed. A designer for the second half of the new Wacker Drive has not yet been named.

Chicago Dept. of Transportation says it expects to bid out relocation of underground utilities in April or May of this year, with the work lasting until the end of the year. Bids to reconstruct the northern half of the Wacker Drive project will be solicited this September or October, says Andrews, with work starting in January 2011 and continuing for a year.

No bid date has been set for the contract to reconstruct the southern half of the Wacker Drive project, but the work is expected to run through all of 2012.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, claims that a three-year-old student recreation facility at its main campus fails to meet some seismic requirements under the 2002 Uniform Building Code. The structure remains open, but a warning notice is posted.

Designed by the Phoenix office of DMJM Design, a unit of AECOM, with St. Louis-based Hastings+Chivetta Architects Inc., the building is likely to end up in court. Bennett & Jimenez Inc., Las Vegas, which has since shut down, was the structural engineer. Phoenix-based Kitchell Contractors was the construction manager at-risk under a $43.9-million guaranteed-maximum-price contract.

The 70-ft-tall, steel-moment framed structure has an aluminum-framed glass curtain wall, 10-ft roof cantilever overhangs, 100-ft clear spans and bow-tie roof trusses. It’s sheathed in a combination of block, glass, precast and metal panels.

Roof leaks and cracked and buckling floor tiles have also been a problem. The university has since solicited request-for-proposals for building design and repair costs, which will be included as part of the seismic repair’s scope of work.

On Feb. 8, Kitchell and UNLV signed a binding arbitration agreement over cost overruns related to re-manufacturing new structural steel, among other things. Kitchell had sought $9 million; it got $2.7 million.

In 2008, the university hired structural engineer Filip C. Filippou, and he produced a report. “Because of the choice of a flexible structural system for resisting lateral forces, the displacements are relatively large,” says Filippou. He blames the “incompatibility” between the flexible and rigid structural components for the problem.

“We feel…we were the victim of severe professional malpractice” by the design team, says Richard Linstrom, vice president and counsel for UNLV.

AECOM says it’s trying to solve the problem. “We have on multiple occasions offered our assistance to UNLV in resolving the issues they have faced on this project, and we remain willing to assist,” says AECOM’s spokesman in an e-mail statement. “However, we do not agree with all of UNLV’s assertions.”

Traffic moved across the Bridge of Lions on March 17 for the first time in four years following the lengthy restoration of the historic landmark in St. Augustine, Fla. A key part of the work required the rehab team to remove the bridge’s signature arched girders and, after sandblasting, return them as non-load-bearing elements.

In 2004, the Florida Dept. of Transportation awarded a rehabilitation contract to Tidewater Skanska Inc., Virginia Beach, Va., for a $76.8-million project to restore the bridge built in 1927.

While the scope of the work included updating the bridge for future generations, the project also tried to maintain the integrity of the national landmark named after the lion statues flanking the western approach. It carries State Route A1A over the Matanzas River, linking downtown to Anastasia Island.

“The two elements that were really sort of sacred were to keep the bascule towers and the girders as original elements,” says Craig Teal, FDOT project manager. “They could be painted over and that type of thing, but they really couldn’t be altered in any way.”

The project called for a $9.4-million, 1,600-ft-long temporary concrete bridge to be built on 120 driven 24-in. piles, with an 80-ft vertical lift span to serve the navigation channel. Once traffic could move over the temporary bridge, the rehabilitation of the original 1,575-ft-long, two-lane bridge began, which included work on the 79-ft-long bascule span and the 24-ft-tall octagonal bascule towers with barrel-tile roofs.

Now the only remaining work other than aesthetic details is dismantling the temporary bridge.

“It was almost like four projects: build one, dismantle one, rebuild it and dismantle the other,” says Thomas J. Fulton, Tidewater project manager.

Both bridgeworks were designed by Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc., Jacksonville. The navigation spans were designed by Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers, Paramus, N.J. The design called for new approach foundations. Because the bridge gained a couple of feet in width in the rehab, the new foundations were built outside the existing foundations.

Previously, the bridge had a 15-ton limit due to the deterioration and dated nature of the structure. The city’s largest fire truck weighs more than that, so moving traffic across the bridge had been a challenge.

The arched steel-plate fascia girders were deemed an integral element in preserving the bridge, but their condition could not be determined until after the bridge had been disassembled, which required the fabrication of special bargemounted steel frames to hold 17 pairs of 100-ft-long riveted arched girders at their bearing points. Due to the traffic patterns in the area, the girders had to be shipped out late at night to Florida Structural Steel in Lakeland, Fla., where they were sandblasted.

Careful Inventory

Keeping track of the girders proved to be a challenge. “The plans we had from 1927 were not very detailed, obviously, so we had to essentially do an inventory of those girders, what the actual section was, and evaluate where we needed to strengthen them,” says Jack Haynes, Reynolds, Smith’s project manager.

Designers created a new steel framework to carry the bridge deck, which had been completely supported by the girders. “They took the load off those girders and turned them into ornamental girders and put in an entirely new structural-steel skeleton inside them to carry the load of the bridge deck,” Fulton said.

The city of St. Augustine seems more complete now that the work is done. “That bridge defines St. Augustine,” Haynes says. “I grew up in Jacksonville, and the debate on whether to replace it or rehabilitate it has been going on my entire life. And I think they did the right thing in rehabilitating it. I think when those lions return and the construction you see out there today goes away, it’s a historic project at a historic location. That bridge is on every postcard you see of the city.”

If another Hurricane Katrina-like disaster hits New Orleans, the city’s water and sewer board will now have a hazard-mitigation plan to ensure that local environmental infrastructure can get state and federal emergency repair funds.

“Probably a lot of other cities don’t have this because they haven’t had the disaster,” says Gordon Austin, chief of environmental affairs for the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board. “This is a formality to make sure you’re eligible for [Federal Emergency Management Agency] mitigation funds.”

The board still is trying to obtain FEMA funding to mitigate an estimated $98 million in damage from Katrina, which struck in 2005. According to Austin, San Francisco waited a decade after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake for FEMA reimbursement, and Florida waited at least 15 years for funds after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Because the New Orleans board did not have its own hazard-mitigation plan, one that classifies it as a single local jurisdiction, the infrastructure provider had to compete for funding with fire and police departments and other city agencies.

By developing a plan that complies with rules for receiving hazard-mitigation funding, the board’s jurisdiction is recognized, and it can apply directly for FEMA grant programs and reimbursements, says Tom Miller, a board staff member.

Austin adds that having FEMA pre-approve specific mitigations speeds up the process. “It makes sure you are aware of potential hazards and that you are actually identifying need,” he points out. Prior to Katrina, because the board had not failed to provide service in more than 100 years, it had underestimated risks of events such as Katrina, Austin concedes.

Lambert Engineers, New Orleans, which developed the board mitigation plan under a $43,200 contract, vetted it at hearings. The board anticipates state and FEMA approval by April 11. The final version will be at www.swbno.org. Federal rules require updates every five years.