2 pages construction paper

LEADERSHIP ROLES

With a project of this magnitude, it is important to have great leadership and communication.

The level of cooperation between the different agencies, contractors, and the public is

fundamental in having the project delivered on time. This project was led by Frank Gaines, who

is the lead bridge engineer for the city of San Diego for over 30 years. The project was awarded

to FlatIron West Inc. for the entire construction phase of the bridge. The traffic study was

performed by Rick Engineering and the bridge was designed by TYLIN International and led by

Project Engineer Kumar Gosh and Project Manager Jesus Garcia. The California Department of

Transportation is the primary owner of this project. Seaworld has a stake in this bridge because

they contributed $4.9 million to the project from their traffic mitigation fund. FlatIron

contributed to the schedule by updating the schedule when there were any delays such as

structural issues in the piles. An example is that the contractor had to perform a gamma test to

determine if there were any structural failures within the pile. The issue detected was a mixture

of slurry and concrete causing an inefficient consistency of the concrete. Due to this issue, the

project was delayed about a month and FlatIron had to update the delay. This delay depleted

most of the project float. Part of this delay was because once the workers made the mistake of

mixing the concrete, they decided to work on the next pile and not fix the first one. While

working on the second one, another structural issue happened and instead of fixing it they

wanted to continue with other piles. That is when Frank Gaines took initiative to tackle the

issues and instructed that the piles should be repaired before continuing.

Scheduling Contributors

● Owner: California Department of Transportation ● City Frank Gaines, Senior Bridge Engineer PE ● Contractors: FlatIron West Inc ● Traffic Study: Rick Engineering ● Bridge Designer:TYLIN INTERNATIONAL ● Project Engineer Kumar Gosh ● Project Manager Jesus Garcia

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KEY PARAMETERS

It is common to experience delays in construction projects due to design faults, lack of team

accountability, resources and equipment management, etc. For the West Mission Bay Bridge

replacement project, one of their biggest conflict that affected the project schedule so far was

the construction of the concrete bridge piers. Since all of the live and dead loads of the bridge

are supported by its piers, it is crucial to construct them efficiently and safely. Equipment

failure and construction mistake should be taken into consideration when creating the

schedule. Any critical issue in equipment failure will likely take up all of the free float in the

schedule, and will not allow for any cushion for other potential delays. In this case, the project

suffered a significant delay because of a concrete pour mishap in one of its 24 columns. Column

number 2 suffered delay because the concrete that was supposed to be filled to displace the

slurry. It was poured above the slurry line which caused the concrete and the slurry to mix into

an inhomogeneous mixture that weakens the structural integrity of the bridge. At this point,

the error not only affected the timeline of that particular phase but it also delayed the entire

construction phase of the remaining 22 columns. This delay will affect Flatiron’s overall profit as

it is cutting the company’s productivity by a significant margin. This mistake could have been

avoided if the labor crew had special training and had someone that specialized in pier

construction to supervise the entire process.

The contractor should have better resource allocation and in the long term could mitigate risk

such as this particular scenario. The contractor could have adequately equipped the job site

with sufficient pile-driving equipment. This short term cost could have saved the project in the

long term. They could have worked on multiple columns and increased productivity. This could

have saved their available float because one driver could continue to work on the following

columns while the other driver completes the previous column delay. The worker’s

incompetence could be mitigated by properly allocating resources.

The contractor also faced site challenges because the bridge is constructed over a sensitive

habitat. The demolition phase of the old bridge will require extra provision to ensure the

preservation of the existing habitat. Any contamination caused by the demolition could result in

environmental fines and leading schedule delay and cost.

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