Road Building the Old Fashioned Way.

My family emigrated from Switzerland to the wilds of British Columbia in 1967.  Up there, out in the bush, fifty miles north of the bend in the river where the Fraser makes its turn south, homesteading and logging in the sub-Boreal-Spruce forest, the Alaska Highway had a mythic draw.  It was a symbol of the wild expanse extending northward, up to where the Aurora Borealis shimmered in the night sky.  It captured our imagination like the Congo, the Zambezi, the Limpopo rivers captured Stanley's and Livingston's  in the 19th century.  It made it possible to jump in your truck and drive 2,000 miles due north, encountering nothing but mountains, rivers, lakes, endless forest,  moose, bear, elk, beavers, loons, and fish.  

World War II provided the impetus for construction of the road.  The Army Corps of Engineers roughed in 1,500 miles of road and got it open in an astonishing seven months.  Eighty-one civilian contractors followed close behind:  86 bridges, 25,000 men, 25 months; one legendary road. 

Hat tip to Nick Cuccia.

PPP/DBOM Model of Building Public Infrastructure, What I Learned as a Sailor, and the San Francisco Bay Bridge

After graduating from law school I lived on a sailboat for a few years.  Based on that experience, it seems elementary to me that if you mount a fixture to a deck by drilling and bolting, you want to apply caulking in the holes and between the deck and the fixture.  You don't mount the fixture and then goop caulking around the outside ... because it will leak.  

The new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay bridge continues to have new problems.  Although we are well towards Spring, we've just had our first winter storm, and it now seems there are leaks into the bridge decking structure.

From this morning's Chronicle:

[T]he guardrails on the suspension part of the bridge are made of steel to save weight - but they are proving to be problematic.When it drew up plans for the project in 2001, bridge designer T.Y. Lin International specified that the 2 1/2-foot-tall guardrails be bolted down through holes drilled in the underlying steel structure that supports the roadway. The design called for a continuous line of caulk between the bottom of the guardrails and the steel structure. That way, water would not make its way through the bolt holes and into the hollow structure below.

Caltrans in its infinite wisdom allowed a deviance.  The contractor complained that placing caulk between the bottom of the guardrails and the steel structure would make installation harder, so Caltrans allowed caulking to be added as a bead around the outside.  Every sailor would know better, it seems. ...

Last year, Caltrans changed the plans, saying it was the "contractor's option" to apply the caulk outside the guardrails after setting them in place - much like a homeowner might lay down a bead of caulk where a bathtub meets a tiled wall.

So what happened ...

The bridge opened in September, and within three months [or more succinctly after the first storm], it was clear that water was getting into the steel deck cavern when it rains, Casey said.

Thoughts

Between all the stories about the defective bolts, and now these leaks, one could get the idea that Caltrans was in over their head with this project.  

Does this suggest that a PPP, with American Bridge/Fluor (in this case) assuming full design-build responsibility and obligation to maintain for 35 years, would have been a better way to go?

Caltrans speaks of a five year shake out period.  It's likely that similar issues would come up with a PPP.  They would happen not in the light of day; we'd never hear about it.  Would it be cheaper?  More efficient?  

It's not inherently obvious that the same decision on caulking would not have been made by the contractor in a PPP/DBOM context.  Of course, the concession entity would bear the cost of making good.  

Is PPP/DBOM better for the public?  Less publicity of problems is not necessarily better.  It would mean less pressure to address some of these problems.  It would not necessarily guarantee fewer problems.  

Introducing Our Newest Triclinium Contributor: Ross Hutchison

J. Ross Hutchison has joined the Triclinium crew.  Ross is an associate at LeVan, Sprader, Patton & McCaskill in Nashville, Tennessee. His practice focuses on representing individuals, businesses and insurance companies in a variety of civil litigation matters, including construction disputes, premises liability, products liability, automobile accidents, subrogation claims and freight and logistics disputes. Mr. Hutchison is a graduate of the Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia.

We are thrilled to have Ross join us on the Triclinium.  

Glenn Ballard Speaks: Touts Consistent Savings of 15%-20% Against the Market

New year. New you. You probably know at least one person, maybe even yourself, who set a New Year's resolution to tighten up that body and become a more productive person in this new year.

University of California at Berkley Professor Glenn Ballard discusses how many in the construction industry have similar goals. Ballard, co-founder of the Lean Construction Institute, and one of the foremost proponents of "Lean Construction" keeps track of the movement around the globe.  The goal of Lean Construction is to foster construction practices that reduce cost by being less wasteful while achieving high productivity and efficiency.

Says Ballard:  "We are consistent in using lean design and construction in healthcare and educational facilities in the United States and we're averaging 15-20% cost reduction against the market, and we are doing it every time--so it's not an accident."

Here he is in an interview in Finland.

Glenn Ballard on Lean Construction