The Texas Heat Melds a Highly Successful JV Team at the Galveston Causeway n By
Travis Watson
The Cianbro/Brasfield & Gorrie Joint Venture team has been hard at work at the Galveston Causeway Railroad Bridge. In a summer that saw record breaking temperatures and heat indexes as high as 115 degrees, the 100-member JV team was incident free and made great progress on the construction of the new 380 foot long vertical lift span and accompanying towers. Superintendent Dave Bousquet and foremen Chet Doloff and Paul Williams have overseen the steel erection of twin 170 foot tall towers just 15 feet away from daily rail traffic. This work has included several critical lifts using a Manitowoc Series 4100 Ringer crane. Among these were the 150,000 pound counterweight boxes, 200,000 pound tower top girders, and the 160,000 pound tower sheaves. All lifts have gone off without a hitch and the erection team is now busy with finishing the miscellaneous steel on the towers in preparation for upcoming mechanical and electrical work. The civil team, led by Gary Burk and Miles Tracey, has been hard at work with the construction of the new two-story bridge control house and counterweight concrete pours. Superintendent Steve Dube and General Foreman Ron Taylor’s electrical team has been following closely, installing and terminating the bridge electrical control equipment in the control house. The electrical team has also successfully installed cable tray up the side of each tower and has begun pulling cable, all while also fitting in several thousand feet of change order conduit installation for the BNSF Railway signal department. Foreman Bob Owens and his team have fabricated and installed the new fender system that will protect the towers from marine collisions. This work involved driving 60 foot long, 24 inch diameter pipe piles and attaching pre-fabricated steel and timber
The new 380 foot long lift span in the midst of painting, miscellaneous steel, and electrical work fender panels. The fender team is now beginning construction of one 45-foot diameter and two 35-foot diameter protection dolphins. Meanwhile, one of the largest sights in Galveston is the new lift span that General Foreman Jeff Adams and team have erected on land. The lift span is currently undergoing final bolt torquing and painting. A few months of miscellaneous steel, electrical, and railroad track work remain before the lift span is transferred to a 100 foot wide by 300 foot long barge and floated into place in the center of Galveston Bay. The Cianbro/Brasfield & Gorrie JV team is looking forward to a safe and exciting next few months in preparation for a scheduled 72 hour float-in outage this winter!
4 110,026 Project Safe Hours
A BNSF Railway train passes through jobsite near new tower and control house being built by Cianbro/Brasfield & Gorrie
C I A N B R O S U M M E R / F A L L C H AT T E R
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