February 2009

Regaining lost ground - the Lake Delton story

There was no choice.
For the good of Wisconsin, Lake Delton needed to reopen.
But can the restoration set a precedent for project delivery?

Dec. 5 could be remembered as the day Wisconsin proved government and efficiency can coexist.

Gov. Jim Doyle huddled with dozens of people on that cold and windy afternoon to officially reopen the section of county Highway A torn apart by the June 2008 floods. The gathering also signified that Lake Delton is ready to collect water from the spring thaw.

The breach that emptied the lake into the Wisconsin River occurred less than six months earlier.

But with Lake Delton directing an estimated $35 million annually into the economy, the state had little choice but to move heaven and earth to complete the restoration in time for this year’s tourism season.

“It was a classic example of how government should work,” said Tom Diehl, a Lake Delton village trustee and owner of the Tommy Bartlett Show. “It was a real clinic.”

The clinic, as Diehl put it, perhaps could not have come at a better time.

Casey Dinges, managing director of external affairs for the American Society of Civil Engineers, said some estimates indicate the average highway project can take up to 12 years to complete. But, he said, there will be political pressure this year to streamline the process in the 2009 Federal Transportation Reauthorization Act.

Jim Berard, spokesman for U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn. and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, agreed.

“Nobody is opposed to speeding up the process,” Berard said. “But at the same time, we want to make sure things are still done right.”

Dinges said all Americans should consider one question when hearing about the Lake Delton project: Why can’t all projects run the same way?

Raj Sheth, president and CEO of Mead & Hunt Inc., that consulted on the Lake Delton project, thinks he has the answer.

He, and other engineers, said they feel most government projects, in this state at least, are completed in a timely manner.

Besides, he said, there were special circumstances surrounding the Lake Delton restoration project.

It’s easy to point fingers at government when assigning blame for why government projects take so long to complete.

But the public often is as much at fault for the delay.

Marvin Ruhland, an engineer with MSA Professional Services Inc., Baraboo, is helping the Wisconsin Department of Transportation plan the expansion of highways 12 and 19 between Waunakee and Middleton into an uninterrupted freeway.

He said the planning for the job illustrates why some projects take so long.

In the case of highways 12 and 19, farmers worry the roads they used for generations will no longer connect to the highway. Surrounding businesses worry they will be cut off from the flow of traffic. Commuters do not want the construction process to slow them down.

In summary, the wants and needs of various interests create several alternatives for any given project, and it takes time to sort through the options to determine the goals of the project and how to accomplish them.

But in the case of Lake Delton, said John Langhans, who serves as the Lake Delton village engineer through MSA, stakeholders — such as local residents, business owners, the state and the federal government — quickly agreed on the goals and how they should be accomplished: restore the breached section of road; increase the dam’s capacity; and get it done before Dec. 1.

“There were no arguments,” Langhans said. “It was important to get Highway A back, and it was important to get back the lake.”

But even when everyone agrees, the permitting process can still significantly extend the timeline for projects.

In a typical infrastructure project, the engineer designs it and takes it to the boss for review. The boss has other projects to review, so it takes a week or so before the engineer gets the boss’ changes to the project.

By that point, the engineer has other projects to work on, so another week or so passes before the engineer makes the changes. The boss signs off and sends the engineer to regulatory agencies for approval.

The agencies, which are generally understaffed, take three or four weeks to get back to the engineer with their changes. The engineer takes a week or so to make the changes before giving them back to the boss, who takes a week or so to approve and give them back to the engineer, who takes a week or so to get the design changes back to the agencies, which take three or four weeks to finally, with any luck, approve the plans.

The state’s letting process usually lasts 30 days. Municipalities take two or three weeks on average.

Then construction can begin.

Piles, Ruhland said, create delays. Engineers have a pile of projects to complete, bosses have a pile of projects to review, and state agencies have a pile of projects to approve.

To speed up the Lake Delton restoration, engineers and agencies eliminated the piles.

Langhans said the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, WisDOT, the Federal Highway Administration and engineering firms assigned to the project people with only one task: Finish restoring Lake Delton.

Ruhland said about 20 of those people held weekly progress meetings. If a permitting issue or question arose, agency representatives immediately corrected the problem.

“This project was put to the top of the line,” Ruhland said. “You don’t have that with most contracts. Not only that, but we were all working on the project every day.”

Even if government streamlines the permitting process, two things stand in the way of finishing a project quickly: construction and paying for construction.

WisDOT used fairly unique strategies to pay for the Lake Delton restoration project, said Bill Oliva, the WisDOT design supervisor on the project, and Julie Seston, a WisDOT administrator.

Oliva said the state took temporary jurisdiction over Highway A, so the state could pay for that portion of the project. The village of Lake Delton paid about $1.5 million to increase the dam’s capacity.

“Usually it’s the other way around,” Oliva said. “The state usually transfers (statutory authority) to the local municipality … like when an old highway becomes a business district.”

Seston said the state paid close to $5 million for the road portion of the project with the understanding the federal government would reimburse the state either through emergency relief money or some other avenue.

The state typically looks ahead six years for projects using federal money, she said, but in the case of Lake Delton, federal officials assured the state it would get the necessary money.

“There was never a point where we expected not to get federal money,” Seston said.

Hoffman Construction Co., Black River Falls, won the contract for the road restoration. Staab Construction Corp., Marshfield, earned the contract for increasing dam capacity.

Aaron Staab, founder and president of Staab Construction, said the construction work for increasing dam capacity was routine.

He said work became a little compressed near the end because engineers were still designing during construction, but his crews never worked more than 50 hours in a week.

The road restoration was anything but routine, though.

To begin, the road project included rebuilding a cofferdam between Lake Delton and the Wisconsin River. Oliva said typical techniques to build a cofferdam in Wisconsin — such as using a clay core or a steel piling cutoff wall — would have cost too much and took too much time.

So Mead & Hunt engineers found an alternative, Oliva said, and, for what appears to be the first time in Wisconsin, used a bentonite slurry wall to build the cofferdam.

“The big reason for using the wall is it is an economical approach,” Oliva said, “and it met the timeline.”

Chad Johnson, Hoffman’s project manager, said the slurry wall wasn’t particularly challenging, but it took effective time management.

He said Hoffman crews worked up to 21 hours a day during the construction period by overlapping two shifts. Johnson said Hoffman typically tries to avoid overtime during infrastructure projects, but project estimates accounted for the extra hours.

Many who worked the Lake Delton restoration came to the same conclusion: It was a satisfying project.

David Boyd, director of business development for MSA, referred to the process as “institutional adrenaline.” When every stakeholder shares a clear goal to meet an obvious need, it’s amazing what can be accomplished, he said.

Yet, according to engineers on the project, there’s little to be taken from the Lake Delton restoration that will speed up other projects.

It’s unlikely, they said, the state would or could commit similar resources to every run–of–the–mill infrastructure project.

“I don’t think there is anything to do to shorten (the construction process) up unless you had the same higher profile of people to crank it up,” Ruhland said. “And I just don’t think that is going to happen.”

Sheth said the state and other engineers would not want to keep up the pace set by the Lake Delton job.

“We live in an age where we are trying to do more with less,” Sheth said.

“When you have a critical need like Lake Delton, you put everything aside.

“But we can’t be on emergency for everything. That’s not how everybody likes to live there lives. Otherwise, we would be in a constant panic.”

Republished from Wisconsin Builder, February 2009 http://www.wibuilder.com/wb-feb-2009/lost.html