Surrounded by workers, Nik Pecci, project safety manager with PMCM Consulting Engineers for the $1.5-billion Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement project—which is revitalizing a 50-year-old link in Long Beach—gestured in several directions: “I’ve got all these [port] tenants here, I’ve got a massive bridge over here. I have to build this thing intertwined with one of the busiest ports in the world. I constantly have commuters, cargo trucks and trailers and trains.”
And that’s just what’s on the surface. The Port of Long Beach had to deal with a world of underground oil-related infrastructure before the design-build team of Shimmick Construction Inc., Spain’s FCC Construction and Italy’s Salini-Impregilo S.p.A. (SFI) could begin in earnest its approximately $650-million contract to build California’s first vehicular cable-stayed bridge.