Robert S. Boh wasn’t exactly a wallflower before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but since then has become something of a local hero and his family business, Boh Bros. Construction Co., has emerged from the shadows with him and into an unfamiliar limelight. The key event in the transformation occurred Jan. 6, when the 5.4-mile westbound span of New Orleans’ Interstate 10 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain reopened eight days ahead of schedule. That lifted the spirits of a devastated city. Although Boh had won a tidy $1.12-million bonus for opening the eastbound span 17 days early—a welcome event given the cash demands related to the hurricane—there was no bonus associated with the westbound work.
“A lot of contractors...you won’t get that extra push that you get when there is an incentive,” says Bob Larkin, a project engineer at Volkert & Associates, the repair job’s Mobile, Ala.-based designer. But Boh Bros. gave the extra push anyway, working non-stop to get the bridge open to four lanes of traffic 130 days after Katrina. “People want to get back. They want normalcy,” Larkin says. “I can say it because I’m the outsider, so it’s easy for me to see.”