2014 Issue

36 A CROSS THENATION, theexpand- ing need to replace the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure, the increasing disruption caused by highway construction, and accelerating construction costs have driven trans- portation agencies and contractors to look for faster, more efficient ways to construct and manage highways and bridges. Utah has be- come a leader inmany of these new technologies and techniques. Of the many examples, three will be highlighted here: Innovative Contracting, Accelerated Bridge Construction, and Au- tomated Signal Performance Measures. Innovative Contracting As early as 1999, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) began using inno- vative methods to engage transportation constructors. Driven by the deadline of the 2002Winter Olympic Games, the Utah Leg- islature enabled methods for “best value selection,” including Design-Build (D-B). Unlike traditional design-bid-build, in the D-B method a preliminary design is completed, then the responsibility for full design and construction services are contracted to a single entity, known as the design-builder. The first D-Bproject that fol- lowed this legislation was the massive I-15 Recon- struction Project in Salt Lake County. A $1.34 bil- lion contract, this project totally reconstructed 17 miles of urban freeway, including 140 bridges and two freeway to free- way interchanges. At the time this was the largest public works D-B project in history in the United States. It was completed ahead of schedule and under budget, and won national awards (including the 2002 ASCE Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award – OPAL). Building on the success of the I-15 proj- ect, UDOT has continued to use D-B on many projects, large and small. The most recent large project was again along I-15, this time in Utah County. The I-15 CORE (Corridor Expansion) project was a $1.75 billion project, and was completed under budget by $260 million in just 35 months. The largest project in UDOT history, the I-15 CORE schedule made it the fastest billion-dollar public highway project ever built in the United States. Involving 24miles of total reconstruction, 63 bridges and 10 interchanges, this project also included an innovative DivergingDiamond Interchange (DDI), a Continuous Flow Intersection (CFI), and the longest two-span bridge ever to be moved using a self-propelled modular transporter (SPMT). Based on their success with D-B projects, UDOT has gone on to employ other inno- vative contracting methods. One notable method is the Construction Manager / General Contractor (CMGC) approach. A variation on the D-B method, in CMGC the owner hires the design consultant and the contractor as separate contracts early in the project. The contractor becomes part of the design team, contributing peer-review evaluations of the design early in the pro- cess, and has the option to bid the eventual construction work. If the contractor’s bid is Transportation Innovation in Utah By Blaine Leonard, PE, Past President, ASCE