was removing the granite blocks in the old foundation" before the lighthouse could be lifted off it, Knott says. "We had to mine them out, like a hard-rock tunneling job." That put the move's start date behind schedule, but the team more than made up the difference in the actual move time. Knott had expected the move to take up
to six weeks; it took three. "There were some people who had planned vacations around coming to see the lighthouse moving, and they missed it," he says. "The people selling T-shirts—you know, 'I saw the lighthouse move'—had lots left over."
K
nott didn't worry about toppling the famous landmark because he had
already imagined—and decided how to fix—worstcase scenarios in the planning stage. Failure, he says, simply wasn't an option, not "when you do something with as much scrutiny as the park service provided, when local residents showed such concern and when there's so much national and international publicity. Everybody was watching."
Four other Georgia Tech graduates, now LAW engineers, helped move the lighthouse: Victor Doritis, MS EE '88, electrical engineering; Alfredo Osuna, MS CE '95, design/construction management schedules; David Pauls, CE '63, MS CE '66, contract-and-scope reviews; and Patrick Sparks, MS AE '83, structural engineering reviews.