Railroad Crossing Project West Terry Street
L
7 Day Challenge
ee County - In June of 2018, I was contacted by Dave Liccardi from the City of Bonita Springs. He stated Seminole Gulf Railway requested we assist them with the West Terry Street Railroad Crossing Project. SGR was amazed at the way we managed our Colonial Railroad Crossing Project and just had to have us on their new project. The City of Bonita Springs also wanted to
complete a beautification project concurrently. The challenge was set before us. We had 7 days to complete what would typically be a 3-4 week project. Not only did they need this done in 7 days, but the schedule fell the week prior to Ajax’s July shutdown week. If we had one rain day, this schedule would not work! Construction Manager Garrett Fons assigned Project Superintendent Charlie McCleaf to the task at hand due to his vast knowledge of the work set before us. After many onsite meetings, phone calls and plan changes, we were ready to do what we needed to make this happen. We hired Bonness Construction and Cougar Cutting as part of our team. We were not allowed to work while Seminole Gulf Railway was working. Their schedule was work all day on Saturday and complete by Tuesday at sundown. So we could not work from sunup to sundown for the first 4 days.
16
The project scope consisted of demolition to the existing crossing and excavation of 25 feet in all directions surrounding the old tub, a new tub installation for the railroad, new sidewalks and curbing, removal of existing guardrail and concrete wall. Also, design and installation of a custom guardrail designed mostly by Charlie, new concrete wall for the new guardrail, 8 corners of the canal drainage ditch regraded and riprapped to the water’s edge, milled, paved and restriped. That is quite the laundry list to complete in 7 days, but we hit it running on all cylinders. We shut down the project area for 7 days. On Friday night at 10 :00 p.m., our lane closures were done and Cougar Cutting and Bonness began cutting 6’x6’ squares, 2 feet deep, on any asphalt within 25’ of the tub, started removing the existing guardrail and concrete and digging for By Lee Strauss the new footers.Estimator Cougar and Bonness both got out of the way at sunup to let Seminole Gulf Railway do their thing.
