Feature Story - September 2005

Military Road

U.S. Army Uses Design-Build for Fort Drum Project

First United States Army Boulevard at Fort Drum, N.Y., was in rough shape before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took on a reconstruction project in 2003 to provide easier access to training areas and to rural hunting and fishing sites.

"We call it the road through Jurassic Park," said Mike Williams, resident engineer at Fort Drum for the corps. "The road was narrow, trees were growing along it, and it was difficult to navigate, even for tanks."

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Delaney Construction of Gloversville, N.Y., won a $10.8 million design-build contract to construct the 13-mi., two-lane road, also dubbed FUSA Boulevard, over the trail of an existing jeep path to open access to base training areas. It began the job in June 2003 and self-performed 85 percent of the work, with Edwards and Kelcey of Morristown, N.J., providing engineering services. The job is scheduled for completion this summer.

The project involved creating a stone gravel roadbed to better simulate war conditions, and building two single-span, steel-girder, wood-deck bridges over Indian River and Bonaparte Creek. It required extensive rock blasting and building eight stream crossings, numerous culverts, and two wetland mitigation areas.

The corps chose design-build as its delivery method because of the project's unique qualities and the potential for time and cost savings, Williams said.

"We're doing more and more [design-build], because you can get the job awarded sooner and work on it sooner," he added. "It allowed more flexibility in making adjustments in design while the work was being done."

The design-build method helped to keep costs down on the road project, said Anthony Felder, who was involved with design and construction of the road but has since left the Army Corps.

"It came in at 75 percent of the programmed amount," he added.

The method also allowed for spot design changes, such as Delaney's decision to modify the original alignment to avoid some wetlands and rock cuts, Williams said. The corps wanted to disturb as few wetlands as possible and did not have aerial views of the densely forested site prior to starting the job, he added.

The project progressed faster than it would have had the corps chosen a traditional method, said Tom Delaney, president of Delaney Construction.

"We were probably 25 percent or 30 percent complete with the project by the time the drawings were fully completed," Delaney said. "As long as we maintained an open line of communication and were aware of one another's thought processes, we could proceed with little risk."

Dale Legg, vice president and chief engineer for design-build at Edwards and Kelcey, said the method worked well at Fort Drum because it was a clearly defined project with straightforward engineering.

Maine Drilling & Blasting of Gardiner, Maine, blasted nearly 400,000 cu. yds. of rock for more than six months. The extensive granite formations sat immediately adjacent to the wetlands, requiring control of the fly rock.

"We used standard mats or sand or gravel backfill ballast to prevent the rock from taking off too far," Delaney said.

His firm also closely coordinated blasting with the base's range-control operations to work around scheduled live-fire exercises.

"If they blasted when an F-16 was going overhead, it could knock it out of the sky," Williams said.

Delaney Construction crushed the blasted rock to use for the roadbed and the 18-in.-deep road surface. A separation fabric keeps the crushed stone from migrating down into the base, which is made of larger rock chunks and ranges from 2 ft. to 6 ft. in depth. The team built ditches along the road to help with drainage.

The two new single-span bridges sit on concrete abutments. The team chose heavy steel girders and laminated wood decks to support the weight of 77-ton tanks and 116-ton transport vehicles.

The bridge crossing Bonaparte Creek is 87 ft. long, while the other crossing Indian River is 105 ft. long. The bridge crossing Bonaparte replaced Bailey Bridge, a structure that the team demolished.

The team also worked around several logistical challenges. All work took place on weekdays to allow access to weekend recreational traffic. The hilly, desolate terrain spurred the team to set up a booster station to strengthen weak radio signals. And with no roads intersecting the alignment, Delaney had to follow a linear construction plan.

In addition, the existing bridge that Delaney replaced, 3 mi. from the northern terminus, was posted for a 10-ton load, which precluded its use for construction equipment. Delaney had to replace the bridge so that work could take place from either end of the new road's length, though occasionally military exercises required the closing of one side.

Delaney said the project's environmental work involved building two mitigation areas for six acres of wetlands near the project. The work, scrutinized by a full-time environmental observer from Fort Drum's public works department, an entity separate from the corps, included installing biodegradable silt fencing along the entire road alignment in order to protect the wetlands and streams.

The project team also built culverts under the road to allow native area turtles to cross and for existing streams to follow their flow. Meanwhile, the team excavated 100,000 cu. yd. of dirt to create 15 acres of replacement wetlands on base property about 5 mi. north of the road project.

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